Whit Watson

Keep Watching This Space...

2009-07-17T13:34:00.002-05:00

...for some big changes in the look of the blog. After four years under this format, we're finally moving some furniture and repainting some walls around here. Long time coming, I know, but I promise, it will be worth it.

Stay tuned.

The Right Price

2009-07-09T18:11:00.008-05:00

One of the truly unfortunate yet inescapable effects of working in sports media is the acquisition of cynicism.

Intentional or not, we -- newspaper columnists, television reporters, radio talk show hosts, you name it -- tend to default towards suspicion and disbelief. We cast a wary glance at politeness. When a player issues a public apology for anything, we roll our eyes. An athlete using the phrase "it's not about the money" has become a cliche' and an inside joke. It's not a universal behavior among my peers, but in my twenty years behind a microphone, I've seen it more than enough.

Of course, we (the media) perpetuate this line of thinking in our product. The death/downfall/embarrassing failure of an athlete is always the lead story; good news, apparently, is boring. There's a chicken/egg argument here -- those responsible for content on shows like "SportsCenter" or in your daily paper will insist that ours is a nation of gawkers who demand such train-wreck detail, while many fans argue that those same content drivers would be well-served (and well-rewarded) to tell us something positive first. That, I suppose, is the subject for another blog.

This lengthy preamble is an introduction to a recent trip I took to Nashville and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to meet the family and friends of Tampa Bay Rays lefthander David Price. The purpose of the trip was to shoot interviews for an upcoming episode of "Inside The Rays" featuring Price; the outcome was a renewed faith in people. Specifically, the people who surrounded Price on his way to the majors.

If this kid doesn't make it, I don't know who will. And though it's been driven into my head for twenty years that "there's no cheering in the press box," I have become a very big fan of David Price. In short, I'm a sliver less cynical today than I was before I arrived in Tennessee.

* * *

I arrived in Nashville on Tuesday morning, around 11:30am local. I love Nashville. Cosmopolitan enough, small enough, brainy enough (thanks to Vanderbilt), and I don't even mind the country music thing. Just a neat town.

After a lunch at Rotier's, our small crew of producer Lynne Mixson, videographer Wes Pratt and myself loaded into a rented van for the half-hour drive to Murfreesboro, where we were scheduled to interview Price's parents. Also on the docket: interviews with the parents of Nathan Stephens, Price's high school teammate who died unexpectedly soon after Price signed his first contract with the Rays in 2007.

(I never look forward to those kinds of interviews. The death of Nathan Stephens is a necessary part of David Price's story; it was at the 2008 American League Championship Series that Price debuted a glove with the words "Live Like Nate" stitched on the thumb, and Price has said that he thinks of Nate every time he pitches. That makes the Stephens' interview necessary, but certainly not easier.)

On our way to the Price home, we stopped at Blackman High School in Murfreesboro, where David Price was not only the best baseball player who ever walked the halls but also graduated as the school's all-time leader in scoring and rebounding on the basketball team. The school, which is massive and young, was empty; Lynne found someone working in the office who allowed us inside to shoot video of their trophy cases. As we did so, we were approached by a member of the BHS athletic department, who was only too happy to talk about David, Nate, and Tyler Morrissey, another of Price's teammates who passed away in early 2008 in an auto accident.

So much tragedy. I suspected, after speaking with this coach in the hallway, that the Blackman community had been galvanized by the passing of Nathan Stephens and Tyler Morrissey. What else can you do in a small town? Those suspicions were confirmed when I met Bonnie and Debbie Price, and Henry and DeeAnn Stephens.

Bonnie is David's dad. He worked in a warehouse for most of his life, and now runs David's foundation. Debbie is David's mom. She is tall -- no secret as to where David Price gets his height -- and she is warm, generous, and welcoming. Also present was Damon Price, David's older brother, and Damon's son Cory, who is five years old and ready to tell you about it. They were absolutely delightful, even in light of the fact that we consumed three hours of their day in recording these interviews.

Henry Stephens is quiet, and very thoughtful. DeeAnn is the type of person who looks you directly in the eye, and takes an interest in anything you have to say. She looked worn, in a positive way, as if the (still recent) death of her son is a daily battle that she is winning, slowly.

They are all attractive, lively people. Henry informed me that the Prices and the Stephens had not seen each other in a while, so he was grateful for the chance to catch up. Bonnie, a man with whom I would suggest you never trifle, invited Lynne, Wes and me to stay for dinner after the shoot. I won't spoil the details -- you'll need to watch the show once it debuts later this month -- but despite some tough questions about Nate (and some waterworks from Bonnie, who can barely talk about his son without weeping with pride), it was just about the most enjoyable and life-affirming three hours I have spent on this job in a long, long time.

* * *

The next day, our motley band arrived at Hawkins Field on the Vanderbilt University campus, where David Price was an All-American, Golden Spikes Award winner, Dick Howser Award winner, and "among the most decorated athletes in any sport in Vanderbilt's history," as I uttered in front of the camera while shooting introductions for this upcoming episode of "Inside The Rays." Our morning began with an interview with Vandy head baseball coach Tim Corbin, the man who has spurned numerous offers over the years to remain in Nashville and build the Commodores' baseball program into a perennial SEC and NCAA contender. He was also the coach who convinced Price to stay close to home and play at Vandy -- not that Price, an admitted homebody, needed much prompting -- and helped develop the big lefty into the number one overall pick in the 2007 draft.

Coach Corbin has a routine that he likes to trot out for recruits. He brings out a marshmallow, a jelly bean, and a rock. He holds each one over a flame.

The marshmallow catches fire and burns. The jelly bean resists for a moment, then eventually melts. The rock -- well, we know what happens to a rock under fire. It remains a rock.

You get the idea.

I asked Corbin: "Where was David Price on this spectrum when he arrived, and where was he when he left?"

His answer: "He'll tell you he was a rock when he got here, but he was a marshmallow. When he left..." His voice trails off. You get the idea.

If my son ever took an interest in baseball, and was good enough to play at the Division I level, I would send him to Tim Corbin in a heartbeat.

Our day concluded with an interview with the academic counselor for the Vanderbilt baseball program, a young lady named Katie Feyes, who used the word "amazing" repeatedly when questioned about Price. Katie, Coach Corbin, and Bonnie Price were all on the front lines of David Price's crisis of confidence during his freshman year at Vanderbilt, when a combination of girlfriend issues, academics, and a poor performance in an intrasquad scrimmage convinced him he should quit the game and go work at a McDonald's in Murfreesboro. The story has been told repeatedly; the outcome, of course, is well known. This 'amazing' support system around David Price convinced him to trust his gift and stick with it. The rest, as they say, is history.

What struck me about these two days was the unabashed love that these key figures in David Price's life have for this young man. They can barely contain their pride and affection; by all accounts, David returns it in spades. There's something to that.

It's so easy to get lazy in this business, to become cynical and critical and point to poor numbers or an off-field transgression and take potshots. It's easy game. It's the basis of sports talk radio and TV shows with 'panels.' It's the tabloid side of sports.

Sometimes, you have to go deep to remind yourself why you were attracted to sports in the first place. You have to take the extra step.

To the Prices, the Stephens, Coach Corbin, and Katie, I just wanted to say: thank you. Thank you for an eye-opening couple of days. And thank you for lifting this young, talented baseball player to the precipice of greatness. Any success he has as a professional and as a man is due in some part to each of you. He earned it, but so did you.

Regardless of how this episode of "Inside The Rays" turns out, I can tell you this: I am not ashamed to admit that I am a fan of David Price. I am also a fan of those who made him what he is today.

See you on TV.

Did I Miss Anything?

2009-06-27T23:25:00.005-05:00

Know what sucks? The first day back after a really great vacation. That's what sucks.

I posted this under a different title last week while out of the office, but after an interview with both Magic GM Otis Smith and head coach Stan Van Gundy today, I thought I should provide an update.

To review: I was on vacation, playing golf with Tye Eastham, the television producer for Magic games on Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida, when both of our cell phones started buzzing off the hook. Our respective spies were alerting us to the Vince Carter trade.

That night, I received several e-mails from friends asking for my thoughts on the deal. Here's what I sent back to one of them:

"This is one of the biggest hit-or-miss deals in recent memory. If we believe that Vince will play hard for Orlando for the life of his deal, it's an absolute home run. When his contract expires, the Magic will get a huge break on the salary cap [he's owed a little over $17 million in 2010-11], and they'll enjoy his 20 PPG skills in the meantime. In exchange for that, Orlando gave up a PG [Rafer Alston] that they couldn't use, a PF [Tony Battie] they didn't use, and a pretty good 2-guard [Courtney Lee], albeit a 2-guard that's theoretically not as good as VC.

HOWEVER, we all know that Vince has a rep in some circles as a sandbagger, so I don't know what to think. I WANT to think that he will play hard on what he believes to be his last big NBA contract, and that he's thrilled to be back home in Florida. But I would not be surprised to see him play quasi-hard for one year and then crap the bed because he can. Sorry, but I've been covering this league for way too long."

How's that for a ringing endorsement?

Caveats: now that I re-read that, I'll amend the statement about him playing hard for one year and not the next. He'll play very hard in his first season in Orlando because he'll be thrilled to be home and eager to fit in with his new teammates and fans. He'll play very hard in his second season because he'll be in a contract year -- the final year of the 4-year, $61.8 million extension he signed with the Nets back in 2007, and therefore his final opportunity to earn himself one more significant payday, in Orlando or elsewhere.

So the Magic get him happy and hard-working for at least two years. So far, so good.

Also: since Alston was gone regardless (no way they keep him and Jameer Nelson on the same roster), and Battie was seeing very little of the court, the trade essentially comes down to Vince Carter for Courtney Lee (with all due respect to Ryan Anderson). Tell me any circumstance under which you do not make that deal.

I loved Lee as a player, but Vince Carter today is worth more to the Magic than what Lee might turn out to be in the next two or three years.

That said, interesting take from Otis Smith today regarding Carter. There's been mutual interest between the two parties going back at least two years, just before Carter signed that extension with the Nets. Otis told me today that there's "an aura" around the 8-time All-Star, a presence that will communicate to his Orlando teammates this fall that the Magic are serious about winning right now.

Two years ago, however, that 'aura' was a deterrent. The Magic are insistent that Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelson become the emotional and spiritual leaders in that locker room, and the concern in the summer of '07 was that neither player was mature enough to develop that leadership if they had to work in the glare of Vince Carter's perpetual spotlight. So the Magic opted to sign Rashard Lewis instead -- a steady, quiet, gets-you-19-without-anyone-noticing-type player who comes in, does his job, and draws very little buzz. In other words, "a perfect personality" for the Magic as constructed in 2007, according to Smith.

Now, however, Dwight Howard has become Superman. He's been the main attraction at the last two All-Star weekends and has reached the NBA Finals. He's won a Defensive Player of the Year award, a rebounding title, and led the league in blocked shots. It's his team, and he knows it. He's developed the maturity necessary for him to assume the role of franchise leader along with Nelson, who was enjoying an All-Star caliber season himself prior to his injury.

Add that to the fact that Carter is now two years older -- and therefore two years closer to the end of (potentially) his last mega-contract -- and the timing is right, in the eyes of Otis Smith. Two years ago, Dwight and Jameer might have deferred to Carter the way they once did to Grant Hill; now, the Magic believe that Howard, Nelson, and Carter are all ready to assume their roles. In hearing Smith lay it out, the trade made quite a bit of sense.

Check sunsportstv.com for listings as we bring you a Season Recap special for the Orlando Magic in the days to come, and later this summer, we'll be replaying the 20th Anniversary special edition of "Inside The Magic" as well, with new footage from the playoffs included.

See you on TV.

Losing Sucks.

2009-06-15T10:52:00.003-05:00

I've got the video to prove it: My backstage tour of Amway Arena after Game 5 of the 2009 NBA Finals.

(For a now-kinda-creepy harbinger of things to come, you can also check out the video I shot at shootaround earlier that morning. Meh.)

For more backstage tours from the NBA Finals, become a fan at Facebook.com/FOXSportsFloridaSunSports.

Meanwhile: remember this?

"...lack of toughness? Maybe. But you could also call it a missing "edge," a sharpness of focus and we're-not-losing-this-game-dammit that every other serious NBA contender seems to possess. A desire -- no, wait, an instinct -- to absolutely step on their throats and not let up until the echo of the final buzzer. Great playoff teams are built on that mentality. It's not optional."

I wrote that one during the Boston series.

"...save nothing. Hold back nothing. Sell out. You may never walk this way again. This is your chance. Make this your time."

Wrote that one before the NBA Finals started. Sigh.

This Magic team was good. Really, really good. 59 wins good. Good enough to beat an admittedly depleted Boston team in the conference semifinals, and plenty good enough to handle the Cleveland Lebrons in the conference finals.

But they weren't great. LA was great.

Great teams get loose balls. They get defensive stops when they absolutely have to. They come up with crucial rebounds. Great teams don't get good breaks, they make them, with hustle and smarts and trust in one another. The Lakers did it every single night in this series; Orlando did it occasionally.

I'm still struggling to figure out what was missing from the Magic in this series. It wasn't talent, because quite frankly, Orlando stacks up against any team in the league top-to-bottom when it comes to talent. However, as Calvin Coolidge once wrote: "nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent."

What the Lakers have is the aforementioned 'edge.' They are relentless. They start coming at you at the opening bell and don't stop until you've been taken out on a stretcher.

Coolidge again: "Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

Who knew Cal was such a hoops fan?

LA won this series because they held their focus and their poise better than Orlando did. Stan Van Gundy brushes off the importance of 'experience,' but I don't know how else one gains those traits.

Orlando's franchise player, Dwight Howard, appeared in his 37th career playoff game on Sunday night. The Lakers' franchise player, Kobe Bryant, has made 31 career appearances in the NBA Finals alone; 175 career playoff games total. And that's not supposed to make a difference?

Say what you will about Bryant, but it's pretty clear where the rest of the Lakers find their cues when it comes to handling pressure situations. Do Jordan Farmar and Luke Walton have more 'talent' than, say, Mickael Pietrus or Marcin Gortat? Hardly.

But they have Kobe to emulate, and Phil Jackson to listen to. That's Hall of Famer Phil Jackson, whose 10th title as a head coach moved him past Red Auerbach in the NBA's record book.

If you don't think experience played an enormous factor in this series, you weren't paying attention. Or, you're Stan Van Gundy, who was doing his mortal best to deflect the weight of history away from his players, which is what a good coach should do.

Stan knows damn well that experience matters. He just refused to say it out loud. No excuses, no whining. You win or you don't.

Dwight Howard said after Game 5, "sometimes you have to lose to win."

Perhaps the experience of this loss will help Howard and the Magic develop that missing edge.

In the meantime, thanks, guys. It was a hell of a ride.

Game 4: The Aftermath

2009-06-12T11:49:00.008-05:00

Let's get a few things straight.

The Orlando Magic did not lose Game 4 of the 2009 NBA Finals just because Dwight Howard missed two free throws with 11.1 seconds to play in regulation, either one of which probably seals the game.

The Magic did not lose Game 4 simply because Stan Van Gundy told his players not to foul on the ensuing Laker possession -- a decision that he says will 'haunt him forever.'

They didn't lose only because Derek Fisher made the cold-bloodedest (just made that up) three-pointer of the series, with Jameer Nelson inexplicably still on the floor and inexplicably playing Fisher to drive.

Nelson's presence on the floor throughout the second half -- as opposed to, say, Rafer Alston, who was coming off the game of his life 48 hours earlier -- did not decide the game. Nor did 15 missed free throws, 17 turnovers, character, experience, savvy or 'stupidness,' as Hedo Turkoglu put it afterwards.

Sure, all of that mattered. But none of those points, alone, decided Game 4.

Game 4 was decided when the Lakers erased a 12-point halftime deficit in the first six minutes of the third quarter. Game 4 was decided when, in that six-minute span, Trevor Ariza -- a Magic castoff, and perhaps the last man in purple and gold that Orlando expected to go off -- went off.

In those six minutes, Ariza scored on a dunk, a runner, a three, a free throw, and another three. By the time Andrew Bynum sank a pair of freebies at the 5:58 mark, Los Angeles had outscored Orlando 18-5, with Ariza accounting for 11 of those 18 Laker points. Ariza's outburst was the haymaker from which Orlando never recovered.

The Magic wobbled through the rest of the quarter, allowing 30 Laker points to their own 14. From our seats in the media section of Amway Arena, it was like watching a prize fight that should have been stopped. That quarter, friends, was the difference in the game.

Dwight's free throws never should have mattered. Stan's decision, and Fisher's three, never should have mattered. The Magic, simply put, never should have been in that position.

30-14 in the third quarter. That was the game. Trevor Bleeping Ariza.

As a sidebar, I wrote in this space that Lamar Odom has been the Lakers' X-factor, but I'm prepared to amend that. While I still believe that the Magic have no answer for Odom, he's been less than deadly in the last two games of the Finals, averaging a very manageable 10 points and 3.5 rebounds in Games 3 and 4.

However, the one guy that Orlando hasn't been able to manage is Pau Gasol, who has averaged 19 points and 8 rebounds on 58% shooting in these Finals. I have to admit, I haven't seen much of Gasol up close this season, but he's much, much better than I imagined. Rashard Lewis, bless his heart, can't handle Gasol in the post; when the big Spaniard steps back, he can knock down jumpers like a 2-guard. He's tougher than I expected, has Go-Go Gadget arms on defense, and has earned at least a modicum of Kobe's trust. He's better than I thought. Expecting Ariza to blow up like that again is a stretch, but Gasol is a serious problem.

Game 5 is Sunday, and I'll once again be Tweeting live at twitter.com/sunsportsFOXFL, with a live postgame show to follow on Sun Sports. Hopefully, we won't be covering the Lakers' victory celebration. In the meantime, if you haven't already signed up to be a fan of Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida on Facebook, you should. We've been using a Flip camera to record behind-the-scenes stuff and some video blogs from me, which have turned out much better than I expected. Check it out.

See you Sunday.

Where Have I Seen This Before?

2009-06-08T11:10:00.004-05:00

Let's jump into the Wayback Machine for a moment.

It's February, 2006. The Orlando Magic were flailing. The John Weisbrod Experiment had ended abruptly the previous spring, Chris Jent's legendary coaching arc had drawn to a close, and Brian Hill had been recalled from reservist duty to theoretically infuse the franchise with some level of organizational discipline.

Shortly thereafter, the '05 draft pick, Fran Vazquez, humiliated the franchise by refusing to report. Grant Hill, who was supposed to (finally) be healthy, was instead fighting his way back from surgery for a sports hernia and was playing only sporadically. Jameer Nelson hurt his foot and was out for a month. It was a springtime of meh.

In February of 2006, Otis Smith and Dave Twardzik were still listed as co-general managers of the Magic, and together they decided (correctly) to blow it up. The first move, on the 15th of that month, was to send Kelvin Cato's winning attitude and charming personality to Detroit in exchange for Darko Milicic and Carlos Arroyo. The second move was to get the hell rid of Steve Francis, who was slowly choking the life out of the franchise.

Two years prior, I had covered the Miami Heat in the NBA Playoffs for Sun Sports. That Heat team -- the team that Pat Riley had dumped into Stan Van Gundy's lap about one week before opening day -- had reached the postseason despite a 5-15 start, roaring back to beat the Hornets in the first round and take Indiana deep in the second.

It was during that assignment, following the Heat to New Orleans and Indianapolis, that I became completely enamored with Lamar Odom. And two years later, I used my remembrances of that '04 Heat playoff run as part of my plea to the Magic to get Odom as part of any Francis deal:

"Odom was the Pied Piper of the Miami locker room [during the '04 Playoffs]. His coaches adored him, so much so that they were almost afraid to talk about it, for fear of jinxing it, or letting some secret spill out. His teammates, especially rookies [Dwyane] Wade and [Udonis] Haslem, shadowed him like puppies, and Odom never led them astray. Point-forward, garbageman rebounder, three-point shooter, he did everything except sell hot dogs. Yeah, he took some dumb shots, but he also brought a Grant Hill-style sense of calm to the floor. Wade was Miami's best player, but the Heat belonged to Lamar Odom."

I was reminded of that post, and my experience with Odom that preceded it, as I watched the first two games of the 2009 NBA Finals. Odom did not go to Orlando, of course -- he's still in LA, and he's largely the reason why the Magic are down 0-2.

Note that I say "largely." Rafer Alston is 3-17 from the field in the first two games of this series, 0-8 from three. Dwight Howard has attempted only 16 shots over two games (Kobe: 56 FG attempts). The Magic shot less than 30 percent as a team in Game 1. They committed 20 turnovers in Game 2. There's plenty of reasons why the Lakers won the first two games.

However, heading into these Finals, I really believed that Odom was the X-factor. The Magic had nothing for Lamar, offensively or defensively, and I felt that if he played well, Orlando would be in trouble. So far, the numbers bear that out.

Stat: through Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Lamar Odom has the best plus/minus rating of any player in the 2009 Playoffs, including Kobe. The Lakers have outscored their opponents by 173 points in 20 games when Odom is on the floor; Kobe's plus/minus is +158.

And Odom has done it in 164 fewer minutes than Bryant -- the equivalent of three and a half fewer games.

He's not the only reason Orlando is down 0-2, but no player has been more directly tied to the Lakers' success this postseason than Lamar Odom. Reminds me a lot of Miami in 2004.

Maybe the Magic should have listened to me in 2006.

(I'm half-serious, of course. No, Orlando didn't get Odom when they dumped Francis in '06, but they did get Anfernee Hardaway's expiring contract, which helped them free up enough cap space to sign Rashard Lewis as a free agent in the summer of '07. And that's turned out okay, too -- lest we forget, Orlando *is* the other team in the 2009 NBA Finals.)

Cliche' Alert: "It's a make or miss league."

This is a new one that's cropped up during these Finals, usually coming from the mouth of ABC analyst Mark Jackson. Like all cliches, it's rooted in truth: in today's NBA, with lightning-fast video scouting capabilities, a 24/7 television and Internet news cycle, and the maddening tendency among all NBA coaches to do what every other NBA coach does, there are no secrets anymore. Everyone knows what everyone else is going to run. Sure, you can switch defenders or run a pet play a little less frequently, but there really are no curve balls. "It's a make or miss league" is another way of saying "It's all about execution," which is true -- if your stuff works, and you can stop the other guys from running their stuff, you win. Brilliant coaching moves have less and less to do with it, especially at this stage.

That said, I'm starting to hate that phrase. But I suppose it is what it is, right?

*Gack.*

Reminder: LIVE postgame coverage on Sun Sports after every NBA Finals contest, with live Twitter updates from yours truly at all of the Orlando games. Also, check out the network's Facebook page for behind-the-scenes video as the Finals come to central Florida.

Is This Just Final, or Final-Final? Notes On Game 1

2009-06-04T09:31:00.003-05:00

--First and foremost: LIVE postgame coverage after every game of the NBA Finals can be found on Sun Sports. David Steele and Matt Goukas, the TV voices of the Magic who have carried you through this entire season (and many seasons before this one), will be on hand in LA for the first two games, working side-by-side with Laker announcers from Fox Sports West. Once the games return to Orlando, Paul Kennedy joins the party, and I'll be there providing what we jokingly refer to as "guerrilla video" -- behind-the-scenes stuff that we'll be posting on our Facebook page. Plus, I'll be Tweeting during the home games at twitter.com/SunSportsFOXFL. Pithy bromides are free as part of the package.

--Second and secondmost: Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida will get two people inside Amway for Game 3. Follow the network on Twitter (again: twitter.com/SunSportsFOXFL) and pay attention for details. Hint: you need to show up at the arena for Fan Fest next Tuesday night to have a shot.

I can't say anything else -- I hear the guards coming.

--Rodney "Sid" Powell was probably the most relaxed member of the Orlando Magic's traveling party this week.

Sid has been the team's Operations Manager (basketball manager + travel agent) since just short of forever. Not much gets him rattled. When I saw Sid at the Magic's final Orlando practice on Tuesday, he told me that once the plane landed in LA, "my job is done."

It required more than 60 hotel rooms and five different hotels, but Sid successfully found a place for everybody -- players, coaches, basketball ops staff, wives, broadcasters, and members of the DeVos family, some of whom are staying in Beverly Hills for the first two games (shocker).

However, he did mention that if this series returns to Los Angeles in the 2-3-2 format, he's in a spot of trouble. The Magic's team hotel in Marina del Rey can only spare 40 rooms during the week of June 15-19 -- not enough to cover everyone.

I told him, "Guess you better win it in 5, then."

But if it does go 6 or 7, Sid will figure it out. He always does.

--Speaking of travel, I'm told that Magic GM Otis Smith brought a larger contingent of his Basketball Operations staff than usual on this trip, which is understandable on several levels. 'Basketball Ops,' for the uninitiated, refers to the group that has direct daily contact with the players: coaches, trainers, managers, physical therapists, video scouts, and the like. There's a handful of Ops guys who travel all season anyway, but apparently Otis wanted to move the entire office, as much as possible, to Los Angeles for the first two games. As a result, seats on the team charter were hard to come by. Put it this way -- David and Matt flew commercial.

Again, I have no problem with this. It's the NBA Finals. If Otis thinks that going all Pat Riley for two weeks gives his squad an edge, fine. And I guarantee you that David and Matt understand that.

--Predictably, Nick Anderson's missed free throws from Game 1 of the 1995 Finals have been a hot topic over the last 24 hours, as media outlets search for content leading up to the Magic's second-ever Finals appearance. Mike & Mike spent about five minutes on it this morning on ESPN Radio; my man Mike Bianchi wrote a largely sympathetic column on the topic as well.

One aspect of that game that has faded over the years, and received only a passing mention in Mike's column: Nick never should have been in that position in the first place. The Magic blew a 20-point lead in Game 1 of the '95 Finals. Nick took the heat, and (as Mike correctly points out in his column) was never the same player or the same person after those four free throws, but it shouldn't have come down to that. Again: Orlando was up by 20, and squandered the lead.

Remind you of anything from this year's playoff run?

--As I Tweeted last night: To summarize every national media piece on the Magic in last four days: "Umm, they're good, but we don't know why. Lakers in 6."

Best example: Ian Thomsen's article in this week's Sports Illustrated. Opening paragraph is a laundry list of what the national media perceives about the Magic; rest of the piece actually does a nice job of refuting each myth. Best line: "How did so many fail to notice the championship potential that now seems so obvious?"

However, in the print version of SI, the sidebar to the very same article predicts a Laker win. So there's that.

I have no gut feeling about this series, which is a new one for me this postseason. I thought that Orlando could beat Boston (but was honestly surprised to see them do so after going down 3-2), and once that happened, I was actually confident about the Cleveland series, based on matchups and the team's success against the Cavs this past season.

But now? I got nothin'. Maybe it's some unconscious form of repression; perhaps I know in my heart of hearts that the Lakers are the better team, and I'm refusing to commit to a pick because I can't face reality. Or, on the flip side, perhaps the mere thought of a championship parade down Orange Avenue -- an NBA Freaking Championship Parade in my hometown -- is enough to short-circuit the wiring.

Know what it feels like? It feels like I'm sitting on the bench while a teammate is in the 6th inning of a no-hitter. I'm sitting on my hands, warm-up jacket pulled up to my eyes, absolutely refusing to look at him or talk to him. And I'm ready to punch out the first rookie who walks over to the guy and says, "hey, man, you're really pitching well out there!"

Anyone remember the 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning after they won the Eastern Conference Finals over Philadelphia? The NHL suits brought out the Prince of Wales Trophy, ready to hand it over to the jubilant Lightning -- only the Lightning weren't jubilant, and they sure as hell weren't touching that trophy. In fact, Dave Andreychuk treated that thing like it was made of uranium. I think I know what they were feeling.

I know Otis Smith does. Otis told the Magic staff earlier this week that the NBA's Eastern Conference trophy will remain in a box, untouched and unseen, until the end of the NBA Finals. His reasoning: "I don't want the silver one."

In other words, he wants this:

I get it.

Orlando, This Is Your Time

2009-06-01T10:10:00.003-05:00

Mounted on a wall in my home is a framed collage of memorabilia from my four years as an Orlando Magic employee. Along with staff passes, magnetic schedules, All-Star Game credentials, and some photos, you'll also find my credentials from the 1995 NBA Finals:

There are only four passes, of course, because there were only four games. Somewhere, in a box in my garage, I'm pretty sure I still have the unused credentials for Games 5, 6, and 7 of the 1995 NBA Finals -- games that never happened, thanks to the efforts of the Houston Rockets. It used to creep me out to look at them. Painful, actually.

Not a single player on the current Magic roster was in the NBA in 1995 (no, not even Anthony Johnson). The last time the Orlando Magic went to the NBA Finals, Dwight Howard had not yet celebrated his 10th birthday, and Rashard Lewis wasn't old enough to drive. If you're looking for connections to that '95 team -- other than Shaq, who delivered a reminder when he inexplicably showed up in courtside seats for Game 4 against Cleveland at Amway Arena -- you'll have to look somewhere other than an NBA roster.

The 1995 Magic played on the same home floor as the 2009 Magic -- for now, anyway. Nick Anderson is still around, making the transition from 2-guard to Community Ambassador. Within the Magic front office, there are literally too many staff members and executives with connections to '95 to list, but some of the notables include Senior Vice President Pat Williams, President/CEO Bob Vander Weide, and COO Alex Martins, to name just a few.

Otis Smith was there back then, as a member of the team's Community Relations department. He often joined the interns and young staffers at the old Rec Center for early-morning pickup games, where he would try to keep it fair by only shooting left-handed three-pointers (and rarely missing). Bob Vander Weide used to run with us in those games, too, and often found himself matched up against Otis. I wonder if either of those two men could have imagined the circumstances that have brought us to the 2009 Finals, or the roles they would play in the franchise's second Eastern Conference title.

(By the way -- Atlanta Hawks Director of Basketball Operations Mike McNieve interned with the Magic's basketball ops department the same season that I interned with Magic Broadcasting, and was a regular in those morning games. I ran into Mike last season in Milwaukee, where he was scouting a Magic-Bucks game. Hadn't seen him in probably ten years.

First words out of his mouth: "How's your jump shot?" Man, do I miss those games.)

Of course, a lot of people I worked with back then have moved on to other pursuits, but I guarantee you that everyone who was with the team during that heady '95 Finals run remembers it like it was yesterday.

Three years ago, when the Miami Heat reached the Finals for the first time in franchise history, I blogged an open letter to their staff, which included the following:

"I hope that [then-head coach Pat] Riley and [then-Heat center Shaquille] O'Neal will take the time to explain the magnitude of this opportunity to the Heat organization. The entire organization ... ticket sales reps, broadcasters (like my man Eric Reid, who's waited nearly twenty years for this), community relations staff, interns, DJ Irie, everybody. They need to hear it ... We [the Magic staff of '95] thought it would never end. That's the message that I'd be drilling into heads on Biscayne Boulevard right now. This must be your time, because it can vanish in a heartbeat ... savor it. Revel in it. Take pictures. Keep a diary. You earned it, so enjoy it. But don't waste it. Tomorrow, it could be gone, and in this league, there's absolutely no guarantee that you'll ever get it back.

Make this your time. The only thing that never ends is the glow of a championship."

Of course, Miami did make it their time, taking the 2006 NBA Championship after climbing out of an 0-2 hole against the Dallas Mavericks. I'm well aware that my little pep talk contributed absolutely nothing to the Heat's success -- I don't see Pat Riley looking to 'Whit's Blog' for motivational material, do you? -- but I felt that it needed to be said.

Now, it needs to be said again.

There are any number of sources of inspiration for this Magic team as they head west later this week to begin the Finals. Perhaps they'll keep dealing the 'no respect' cards, which were very, very kind to them in the Boston series and the Cleveland series. On that note, Orlando is already down in the ESPN.com fan poll, JA Adande says Lakers in 7, and according to John Hollinger's supercomputer (locked away beneath a mountain in Colorado), the Magic weren't even supposed to be here.

Go ahead and fill the bulletin board if you want, fellas, but if I were speaking to this team before Game 1, that's not where I would go.

Where I would go is where I went with the Heat three years ago: you may never, ever have this opportunity again, so play these games as if they are your one and only chance in this lifetime to win an NBA title. As the late Walter Payton wrote in his autobiography, "tomorrow is promised to no one."

Turk could opt out. Dwight could (God forbid) get hurt. Gortat's seemingly imminent departure could be a bigger setback than imagined. Jameer might never recapture his pre-injury mojo. I am neither suggesting nor hoping that any of these things will occur; I'm simply saying, you never know. Nothing in this league is guaranteed, as Pat Williams is fond of saying.

Fourteen years ago, a lot of people in the Magic offices -- including me -- believed that our run was just beginning. Fourteen years later, we've all been humbled by the Basketball Gods. We get it.

So save nothing. Hold back nothing. Sell out. You may never walk this way again. This is your chance.

Make this your time.

Call It Like We See It

2009-05-27T10:44:00.004-05:00

Forget, for a moment, about the Orlando Sentinel article that broke down the Magic's win-loss record this season by which referee was assigned to the game -- a piece that ESPN Radio's Hubie Brown declared "unprofessional" and worthy of a league scolding.

All you need to know about the perception of officiating in the NBA is this: there's a website that tracks the "performance" of every referee in the league in terms of how often the home team wins when said ref is working the game, how often the favored team covers the spread, and whether or not the game in question hits the over/under. Sixty-five NBA refs listed, and the site has a statistical breakdown for every single official.

The purpose, of course, is to assist gamblers in making their bets on NBA games. And the implication couldn't be more obvious if I rolled it up and smacked you on the nose with it: Vegas believes that referees affect wins and losses. Don't take it from me, take it from shadowy figures who bet on games for a living.

That said, I have never been a "blame the ref" guy, just like I've never been a "fire the coach" guy. Unlike the vast majority of local and national media, I've actually worked in a front office before -- four years, in fact, in the Magic's broadcasting department from 1993 through '97. As such, I admit bias towards coaches and GM's -- yes, some fail, but they're never as incompetent as often portrayed -- and the refs are, well, the refs.

They suck. So what? Players win games, and players lose games.

However, I tweeted the following during Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals: "The NBA risks losing both casual and purist fans if the officiating isn't addressed. Beyond inside joke and into embarrassing now."

Jamie Shapiro, senior producer for Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida, posted this on his Twitter feed, independent of mine: "turned off Magic gm be4 OT. LBJ's fall/foul & the mugging on [Dwight Howard]...refs issue kills my interest. Another casual observer lost?"

ESPN.com's Bill Simmons has been all over the "refs are ruining the league" angle for years now, especially after the '06 Miami-Dallas NBA Finals. Do a Google search for "bad NBA refs" and you come up with over 130,000 results, from general queries on suckitude all the way to a website actually dedicated to the very premise (a bit outdated, but you gotta love the title).

My question is this: where, in the eyes of David Stern and the NBA, is the tipping point?

What has to happen for the league to address what has become, even among casual fans, the commonly accepted premise that the referees are maddeningly inconsistent at best, and blatantly pushing one team/star player over another at worst?

If Tim Donaghy didn't trip the wire, what will?

Actually, that's a bad analogy, because Donaghy was affecting the outcome of games for personal, financial gain. The commonly accepted conspiracy theory today holds that the NBA, in concert with its television partners, is somehow passively-aggressively attempting to orchestrate certain postseason matchups -- i.e., Kobe vs. Lebron in the Finals, a premise that was gleefully skewered in an article by Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) a few days after the AP's Tim Dahlberg gave the issue more sober treatment for MSNBC.com.

On the surface, does this make sense? If we assume that A. certain players can move the needle significantly enough to make a measurable difference in TV ratings and (indirectly) revenue, and B. that the NBA and its television partners could somehow pull this off without anyone finding out and blowing the whole thing up, sure.

But here's the thing: there's little evidence to suggest that any one current player (or pair of players) can lift an NBA Playoff series to a level that rivals any of the highest-rated shows in prime-time television. It just doesn't wash.

Fact: for the week of May 4-10, 2009, two episodes of 'American Idol' garnered the top two spots in the weekly Nielsen TV ratings, followed by 'Dancing With The Stars' and 'The Mentalist.' The Wednesday edition of 'Idol' recorded 23.5 million viewers.

Fact: that same week, the highest-rated program on cable television was a Rockets-Lakers playoff game (also on Wednesday night), which amassed 6.3 million viewers, or roughly one-fourth of 'Idol' in head-to-head competition. And last I checked, Kobe Bryant was playing that night.

Would a Kobe-Lebron matchup in the Finals honestly pick up 17.2 MILLION more viewers? Really? Would ANY basketball playoff series approach those kinds of numbers?

I realize this is far from scientific, but you get my drift. If we assume that the league/networks are attempting to squeeze out certain matchups, the numbers suggest that it's a fool's errand. It might have worked in the Jordan era when our choices for entertainment were a fraction of what they are now, but in today's thousand-channel universe, it's pure folly. Somebody's still going to be watching 'Thrillbillies,' no matter who's playing on the other channel.

Which brings me to the second assumption -- that the NBA would risk complete and utter destruction of 50+ years of blood, sweat, and tears by institutionalizing an illicit set of 'unspoken rules' to its referees. If that story ever got out -- that the league somehow communicated a set of instructions to its referees on how to differentiate calls based on player, team, series, or TV network desire -- well, goodbye, pro basketball. Goodbye, multi-billion dollar international business. Goodbye to all of it.

You think David Stern is that stupid? Quite the opposite.

So what's the answer?

Usually, it's the simplest solution, which could be this: Refs are human, and therefore buy into reputation and hype. They're swayed by charisma. Rankled by bad attitudes. Hold grudges. Get stunned by athleticism (witness Dwight Howard whistled for a foul on Lebron's 3-pointer in Game 3 -- there's no way any human could get back that quickly and leap that high to make a block and do so cleanly, so it must have been a foul, right?). The game has evolved faster than the officials' ability to manage it, and the NBA (to date) has stubbornly refused to adjust its practices to help them catch up.

I could be wrong, but it's one theory.

All I know is this: when discussing the possibility of the Magic reaching the NBA Finals this morning, my officemates and I agreed that Denver would be a more favorable matchup than the Lakers -- not because of basketball acumen, per se, but because the Magic would be more likely to get the benefit of the whistle in a Denver-Orlando series than they would in an Orlando-Kobe series. And we can't be the only ones having that conversation right now.

Not exactly how the NBA would like to frame the discussion, is it?

Yes, A Lacrosse Entry

2009-05-25T08:28:00.003-05:00

Just received a note and had to pass it along.

John Griffin was a two-time lacrosse All-American as a goalie at Cornell, leading the Big Red to their last NCAA title, back in 1977. Inducted into the Cornell Athletics Hall of Fame in '08. Was also a teammate of Eemon McEneaney, widely regarded as one of the best players in Cornell history and a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. A golden era for Cornell lacrosse, with national titles in '76 and '77 and appearances in at least the national semifinals every year from '74 through '78.

John Griffin's nephew is Mike Griffin, who is one of the lead producers on Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida for Rays baseball, Magic basketball, college hoops, FHSAA Finals, you name it. Griff sent me a note this morning reminding me that A.) his uncle was the last goalie to lead Cornell to a national title and B.) I was a lame alum for not mentioning today's championship game in the blog.

So: the Big Red play for another national championship today at 1pm against Syracuse. As Mike said to me, turn it on during the barbecue. I'd love to lay down some smack about Syracuse, but their broadcasting graduates are everywhere and I'll probably end up needing a job from one of them someday, so...

Let's Go Red!

Cleveland? Rocked.

2009-05-21T11:48:00.007-05:00

Got into a minor debate on Wednesday night after the Magic's exhilarating 107-106 win over Cleveland in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

It happened to be via Twitter, which begs the question: what do you call that? I mean, if you're firing snippy Tweets at one another, is there a name for it? A Tweetdown? A snit-Twit? Are you talking Twack? I need to know these things.

Anyway, the Orlando Sentinel has been asking their Twitter followers to come up with headlines for the next morning's paper after each Magic playoff win. I suggested "HEART AND MUSCLE" after the Game 7 clincher over Boston; nice historical reference to the 'Heart and Hustle' teams (coached by Doc Rivers -- get it?) and apropos of the entire vibe of that series. Tim Stephens, the sports editor for the Sentinel, replied @whitwatson that he thought 'Heart And Muscle' applied more to Dwight Howard than the entire team (disagree), but that instead of using it as the section headline, he might apply it to Mike Bianchi's column (which he did).

Okay, then. So on Wednesday night, after returning from Wall Street Cantina in Orlando in a failed effort to give away an autographed Jameer Nelson jersey (go follow Sun Sports & Fox Sports Florida on Twitter for another shot at it), I jumped on to the Twitter website to see what the suggested headlines might be.

Tim wrote that readers had suggested "MAGIC KINGDOM" and "SHOCK & AWE."

(Deep breath.)

1. Any sportscaster, writer, blogger, radio host, or other member of the media who ever -- EVER -- uses the phrase "Magic Kingdom" in reference to the NBA franchise in Orlando should have his/her credentials pulled for life. A flogging wouldn't be a bad idea, either. Preferably, this would take place in public, with stockades involved, and peasants in medieval garb hurling vegetables.

For one thing, I'm pretty sure Disney takes a dim view of attaching that phrase to a basketball team (or anything they don't own). Don't forget: Disney makes the Mossad look like a Rotary Club.

Seriously. The Mouse can get to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Do NOT cross those people.

For another thing, the "Magic Kingdom" thing is lazy, over-used, not cute, stupid, and dead. Do I make myself clear? Or am I being obtuse?

2. The "Shock & Awe" label draws an analogy between a basketball game and a war, which is probably not where you want to go. But more than that, why "shock?" What was so shocking about the Magic beating Cleveland for the third time in their last four meetings, and 9th in their last twelve? Even Brian Schmitz admitted that "maybe it's not a fluke."

The Magic have owned Cleveland of late. I'm not saying Orlando is going to sweep the series, but why are we so stunned that they won the first game? Did they not also beat Boston on the road in Game 1 of that series? I know it was 16 whole days earlier, but have we completely forgotten that the Magic have, umm, done this before?

As I tweeted to Tim:

@twstephens Why "Shock?" What else does this team need to prove? Why perpetrate the myth that this was somehow a fluke? 59 wins = ?

His reply:

@whitwatson I guess the shock of coming from 16 down against team unbeaten in playoffs and 39-2 at home on night LBJ scores 49 ...

Fair enough. However:

@twstephens Point well taken. BTW, Magic's road record (27-14) same as CLE and BOS. Home: 32-9. Again: "Shock?" Maybe they're just *good*.

(Didn't know that, did you? Same road record this year as both the Mighty Lebrons and The National Media's Favorite Team. Only 7 fewer wins at home than the impenetrable Cavs, and only 3 fewer home W's than the defending champs. BURN.)

Tim's answer:

@whitwatson Magic play better when people dis 'em ... :)

(Translation: I'm busy, TV boy. You made your point. Now go away so I can put a freaking newspaper to bed.)

Thus endeth our witty exchange. By the way, they went with "CAVS CLOCKED." Meh.

My suggestion last night: "CLEVELAND? ROCKED." You be the judge.

To repeat: follow @SunSportsFOXFL on Twitter for clues on how to pick up autographed swag and/or admission to Games 3 and 4 of the Magic-Cavs series.

Just don't be surprised if Orlando wins again. It's no shock.

Magic Numbers

2009-05-18T11:11:00.005-05:00

One sure way to know you've played a great game against the Boston Celtics: Bob Ryan admits it.

The Boston Globe's legendary columnist and media personality knows exactly what happened, and to his credit, doesn't tap-dance around the fact that the better team reached the Eastern Conference Finals: "[The Magic] richly deserve that honor after playing as sound and intelligent and skillful a game as a road team can play in a Game 7."

And this line stopped me cold: "You simply cannot overpraise the Magic for the way they played."

Wow. I think I'll leave it at that.

Except for this: the Magic were 5-2 in the regular season against the three other teams still standing in the NBA Playoffs (2-0 vs. the Lakers, 1-1 vs. the Nuggets, and 2-1 vs. Cleveland). That represents the best regular-season winning percentage within the group (.714 to the Lakers' .625).

Raw numbers: LA was 5-3 against the other three semifinalists, Denver was 2-6, and Cleveland was 3-4.

What does that mean in the Conference Finals? Not very much, probably.

Who had the best scoring defense in the NBA this season? Cleveland, at 91.3 points allowed per game.

Next best among the conference semifinalists? Yep: Orlando, 6th overall at 94.3 PPG allowed. The Lakers were 13th in the NBA in opponents' scoring (99.2 PPG allowed) and Denver was 19th (100.9 PPG).

Is that anything? Naaaaah. It's the playoffs.

One more: by the time Orlando and Cleveland play Game 1 on Wednesday, the Cavs will be about as rested as an NBA team can possibly get -- nine days since they completed their second-round sweep of Atlanta. During the regular season, the Cavaliers were 12-1 in games played on at least two days' rest, averaging 104.4 PPG in those 13 games.

Of course, Orlando only gets two days' rest before starting the Conference Finals. The Magic played 15 games this season with at least a two-day layoff.

Their record in those 15 games? 12-3, with a scoring average of 101.5 PPG.

But hey, it's the playoffs. I'm sure that means nothing.

Right?

Board Work

2009-05-15T10:24:00.009-05:00

I wonder what Tim Legler thinks now. For that matter, I'd like to get a reaction from my main man Mike Bianchi.

The former NBA player and the current Orlando Sentinel rabble-rouser were both among the chorus claiming that Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy's job was in jeopardy as a result of Dwight Howard's outburst of frustration after Game 5 of the Magic-Celtics series. In the video link above, Legler makes his case during the latter half of his 'SportsCenter' segment that Magic management would have to take a hard look at Van Gundy's position if the Magic lose this series. Dwight's outburst also gave unnecessary legs to Shaq's 'Master of Panic' comment, which has been in heavy rotation ever since the Philly series.

Van Gundy, who does not suffer fools gladly and honestly doesn't care what you think of him (trust me), has done little to diffuse any of the swirling storylines, which has made this a turbulent postseason for the Magic in terms of PR.

In the aftermath of Game 6, wherein Dwight Howard corralled 22 rebounds (10 offensive) to go with his 23 points, the prevailing storyline among the national and local media was something along the lines of "Dwight finally decided to be dominant." Read Bianchi's follow-up column from Friday morning or Ken Berger's piece at CBSSports.com and that's exactly what you get:

"I don't believe it was Van Gundy allowing Dwight to be dominant in Game 6; I think it was Dwight deciding he had to be dominant...It wasn't so much Van Gundy and the Magic making a more concerted effort to put the ball in Dwight's hands; it was Dwight making a more concerted to go get it." (Bianchi)

"This was about Howard, the most intimidating physical presence to enter the league since Shaquille O'Neal, finally deciding to act his size." (Berger)

Search for Magic-Celtics Game 6 stories on just about any news source you wish, and you'll find something to that effect -- that Dwight just made up his mind to go own the game.

Unless you happened to check the Boston Globe and Bob Ryan's column, which included this little nugget, a reference to a one-hour meeting between Howard and Van Gundy before the pivotal Game 6:

"Van Gundy had a big heart-to-heart with his franchise player, during which he was able to produce a tape showing Howard just how many times he had gotten the ball in this series and what he had done with it after he got it. It was rather humbling. Howard may not have been worth throwing to, given that he really has no go-to move whatsoever...Once Howard understood his limitations, he began focusing on his strengths and one of his great strengths is his strength, if you know what I mean."

Ken Berger mentions this in passing in his article: "...Van Gundy stubbornly [stuck] by his premise that Howard didn't need more touches. He needed to try harder, defend better, rebound more fiercely, and use his unrivaled gifts of size and athleticism to get the results he wanted."

This is a critical piece of information in relation to Van Gundy's coaching acumen, and yes, even his job security. Curious, then, that no Orlando media outlet chose to run with it.

According to ESPN's Lisa Salters, who reported it via telephone on 'SportsCenter' prior to Game 6, the Van Gundy-Howard meeting included not only video of Game 5, but a whiteboard filled top-to-bottom with Van Gundy's handwritten analysis -- shot charts, details of each possession, and most importantly, the number of touches Dwight received in Game 5 and the results of each. It was as if Van Gundy were preparing for trial. All of the evidence was assembled, according to the ESPN report.

So imagine you're Dwight Howard. You've just ripped your head coach in front of the national media, and as expected, you've been called into the principal's office. But instead of a lecture or a screamfest, you end up with a DVD of every possession and a handwritten transcript of the game in question, all right there in black and white.

One can imagine Van Gundy's killer closing argument: "There it is, Dwight. Show me on that board where I'm wrong."

No confrontation, no embarrassment, no retaliation for Dwight's public flogging. Just the facts. A detached, emotionless transcript of what happened in the game -- "here are your touches, and here are the results." Van Gundy didn't just 'stubbornly stick to his premise,' he proved a theorem. Dwight didn't just "decide" to dominate -- he was presented with the facts of the case, and they were inscrutable.

And the result?

23 points, 22 rebounds, a season-saving victory, and a contrite franchise player who now appears to get it: "I guess that's my biggest lesson. Keep my mouth shut and admit when I was wrong."

If Orlando goes on to win this series, somebody -- Tim Legler, Mike Bianchi, Ken Berger, Bob Ryan, somebody -- had damn well better write a column lauding Van Gundy as a genius for the way he handled the Howard situation. Because if the Magic advance beyond Boston, it will be as a direct result of that meeting, and the preparation that Van Gundy devoted to the task of getting his star player back on board. What price, I wonder, can we place on the trust that Van Gundy gained from Howard now that Dwight has seen the results of Van Gundy's due diligence?

It's a players' league, as Van Gundy has said many times before. A head coach gets too much credit for wins and takes too much blame for losses (another Van Gundy favorite). That's the gig, and if you don't like it, there's always a dozen guys lining up behind you to fight for the spot.

Criticize a head coach when he fails, if you wish; it's also part of the gig. But give him some credit when he succeeds. And that Game 6 win rests as much on Stan Van Gundy's whiteboard as it does on Dwight Howard's biceps.

On The Edge

2009-05-13T10:51:00.003-05:00

My main man Mike Bianchi beat me to the punch. Sorta.

In the aftermath of the Magic's painfully predictable choke job in Game 5 against Boston on Tuesday night, Bianchi theorizes that had Jameer Nelson been healthy, none of this would have happened.

"Where's their heart?" Mike wonders. "Where's their toughness?" He points to Nelson, out for half the season with a torn labrum, for a reply.

I agree with Mike to a point. Nelson is the one guy on the Magic roster other than Turkoglu who can manufacture himself a shot under pressure -- although I assign a serious caveat to that statement, as Turk's big shots tend to come from beyond the arc, where the risk often outweighs the reward (i.e., long rebounds that the Magic never seem prepared to corral). That said, I don't know that Nelson's healthy presence on the floor would have been enough to stave off Boston's comeback on Tuesday night.

Instead, Mike's column, and the comments from Sentinel readers that followed it, point to a much bigger issue with the Magic -- a general lack of toughness, or focus, or whatever you want to call it.

An edge. Let's go with that. This team is not edgy. And in the postseason, edge wins.

With 5:35 to go, Orlando was up by ten. Watching at home, I think I shared the sentiments of most loyal Magic viewers when I thought to myself: crap, here we go again.

Sure enough, 11-0 run from Boston. Now, even then, the game isn't over -- a 1-point margin with 1:20 left is nothing. But judging by the body language of the Magic players, well, they were cooked.

Is that lack of toughness? Maybe. But you could also call it a missing "edge," a sharpness of focus and we're-not-losing-this-game-dammit that every other serious NBA contender seems to possess. A desire -- no, wait, an instinct -- to absolutely step on their throats and not let up until the echo of the final buzzer. Great playoff teams are built on that mentality. It's not optional.

There are a few guys on the Magic roster who have it: Redick, Pietrus, even the rookie Courtney Lee. Fearless, all of them. Willing to leave it all on the floor. But none of those players are your go-to guy, or even a second or third option.

Boston? They're a lesson in edgy: Pierce, Allen, Rondo, and now even House, Scalabrine, and the newly reborn Big Baby (who has probably grown up as a player more in the last two weeks than he has in his entire basketball career). The first three players on that list are guys you could theoretically give the ball to in the final seconds and feel good about your chances. The last three are players who have proven in this postseason that they can heat up enough, or make enough key plays, to save a ballgame.

Where are those guys for Orlando? And whose job is it to draw it out?

Dwight Howard called out his head coach, leading Bianchi to conclude that not only is it Van Gundy's job to discover that edge, but that Howard's comments mean Van Gundy's tenure in Orlando is now shaky. And seeing as how this is a "players' league," as Stan himself has said many times before, Bianchi may be right.

Sorta.

Yes, Van Gundy is calling the plays, and yes, he's making the substitutions (the two areas where Howard had the biggest gripe), but isn't it the players' job to play? Who, exactly, is Stan Van Gundy guarding out there? How many wide open shots did he miss on Tuesday? Van Gundy isn't immune to criticism, but he's also not responsible for guarding Eddie House. Just sayin'.

Our editor, Mike Wargo, just walked into my cubicle and laid this one down on me: if the Magic win the Boston series, they have A. reached the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in over a decade, B. knocked off the defending World Champions in the process, C. come back from a handful of truly dreadful and deflating postseason performances to do it, and D. captured the attention of the entire league. Even if they go on to lose to Cleveland, there's hardly any shame in that (see: James, Lebron), and the season can be considered a success.

If they lose tomorrow night, the entire season is a disappointment, a 59-win mirage rendered meaningless by a lackluster postseason. There's really no in-between.

Good stuff, this NBA. No pressure, fellas.

Rays, Magic, and Records

2009-05-12T18:52:00.002-05:00

Are we rowing out to a sinking ship?

We'll find out soon enough.

As I recently mentioned in this space, Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida are about to unleash a hard push to convince you to follow us on Twitter or be a fan on Facebook. The benefits of same are TBD; I did find (via Twitter) at least one media professional who is convinced that we're onto the Next Big Thing. My jury is still out.

Anyway, I've been in meetings this week discussing Twitter; we're about to shoot a short feature that explains how to follow us or be our fan on Facebook (it'll run during Marlins and Rays pregame shows on Sun Sports and/or Fox Sports Florida). By the way, there's also NBA playoff basketball going on, and Evan Longoria just played about as perfect a month of baseball as is humanly possible.

With Game 5 of the Magic-Celtics starting as I write this, I'll save the hoops commentary for a while...save for this:

--The fact that Rajon Rondo and Eddie House both remained on their feet throughout Game 2 of this series was very, very disappointing. Or, put another way: someone in a blue shirt needed to put one or both of those guys on their ass, and it didn't happen. Rashard Lewis, who has otherwise been a revelation in this postseason, should have been fined for allowing Rondo that dunk.

Seriously, that's been bothering me. If Orlando loses this series, I think I'll deem Game 2 the tipping point -- not just for the Rondo dunk, but because the Magic curled up in a ball and let that game happen.

Pick a championship team from the last 20 years -- the Bulls with Jordan, the Spurs with Duncan, the Lakers with Kobe, anybody. Do any of those teams allow themselves to be embarrassed like that without sending a hard-foul message on the other end? Never.

The Big Baby Davis thing bothers me much less. The Magic forced Boston into the shot Orlando wanted, and had the Magic been a shade better than 5 for 27 (!) from three-point range, that final possession would have been irrelevant. That game was lost way before the chubby guy made an open jumper and (didn't) knock over a kid in the front row.

And just for fun, how about Evan Longoria's stats after his first 31 games: 44 hits in 123 at-bats (.358 batting average), 11 homers, 27 runs, 44 RBI, 92 total bases, a slugging percentage of .748 (!). That's ridiculous.

He's missed a couple of games this year, and is unlikely to play every day all season long, so let's say he plays in 150 this season. At his current pace, Longo would finish the year with 212 RBI -- and that's in 150 games. The more he plays, the better his odds of driving in a few more runs.

The single-season MLB record for runs batted in? 191. Hack Wilson, 1930. Just sayin'.

See you on TV.

Whither Twitter?

2009-05-06T11:10:00.005-05:00

Well, the end is near, apparently.

In a recent column for Advertising Age, Simon Dumenco predicts the coming nothingness of Twitter, Facebook, and their ilk. Seeing as how my employers at Fox (and just about every other media outlet on Earth) are currently chest-deep in various and sundry 'social networking' action plans, this is a bit disturbing.

Dumenco's central argument, by the way, is one that I happen to agree with completely: the whiz kids behind Twitter and Facebook launched their killer apps before performing the necessary due diligence that might result in workable business plans. Or, as I wondered out loud the very first time I saw Twitter: "How are they going to make any money at this?"

For Fox Sports Florida, Sun Sports, or any other business, the benefit of a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page is pretty obvious -- it's low-cost advertising, and a perfect method of engaging your audience. You invest time and energy (which have a monetary value, but negligible) to update your page, provide some compelling content, and hope to attract followers/fans who might turn into viewers/customers. Simple.

The challenge for Twitter and Facebook, as Dumenco so eloquently explains, is figuring out how to monetize those sites -- or how to gain revenue from users, as opposed to users potentially gaining revenue through them.

One of my Cornell classmates -- who I stay in touch with via Facebook, oddly enough -- is a very successful entrepreneur. MBA from the Sloan School at MIT, experience in a variety of startups, she's been there and done that. Once, in a speech to students back at Cornell, she pointed out that nine times out of ten, when the founders of a startup are asked "why are you doing this?", the answer is something along the lines of "because I created this really cool technology." Her argument -- one that Dumenco would probably agree with -- is that the "why" should be "to make money." In other words, create long-term value. Viability has to come first, or at least within the top three -- otherwise, it's not a business, just a neat idea.

Twitter and Facebook -- like Mark Cuban's old Broadcast.com, like YouTube, like Lord knows how many other Internet flavors-of-the-month -- strike many as "cool technologies" that were created with the intent of someday being sold, the dot-com model of the late '90s that produced the infamous 'bubble.' Critics like Dumenco argue that there's no obvious long-term value, no consistent revenue stream, and little flexibility to adapt to changing markets. That's fine for those who started the business -- Cuban did fairly well for himself when Broadcast.com was sold to Yahoo in '99 for $5.7 billion -- but what about the business itself?

Without a workable business plan, the "cool technology" becomes a paper tiger. There's no inherent value in it. It's just "cool."

(BTW: Rumor has it that Apple is in negotiations to buy Twitter for $700 mil in cash. Again, the Twitter guys will do fine, but what will that do for the site itself? Clearly, Apple wouldn't do the deal without a plan...would Twitter become closed to those without iPhones? They're gonna want return on investment somehow. As my buddy Drew likes to say, "someone must pay." With him, usually on the golf course. I'm digressing again.)

I lack an MBA, but I'm very much in touch with my Common Sense side, so let's break it down: Facebook offers the possibility of micro-targeting advertising messages at users based on their activity on the site -- for example, if I list myself as a member of the Orlando network, I might see an ad for a Central Florida-based product or service on my front page the next time I log in. Fine. In the long term, that might work, and it might not, depending upon a number of factors, including the speed with which Facebook keeps up with me and the gazillion other users who sign on every day, the accuracy of the message, and my motivation to act upon it.

But with Twitter, I just couldn't see it. Dumenco explains this more eloquently than I, but the bottom line is, there's no bottom line. Short of charging users to post, selling ads on the site, or some other fee-based plan, there's no way that Twitter can turn a profit under current circumstances. It's the Internet equivalent of the Orlando/Miami condo boom: where is the money gonna come from?

So let me throw this out: if we were asking you to follow Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida on Twitter, what would motivate you to sign up? And further, what value can a business provide via this particular app that would compel you to STAY with Twitter if (and when) their business model changes? Because it seems like that day is coming, and when it does, Twitter will see a drop in traffic that could politely be termed "dramatic."

We're all accustomed to getting it for free, myself included. So, just in case -- what could Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida deliver via Twitter that would compel you to stick around?

In the weeks to come, you're going to see and hear us asking viewers for feedback on what kind of content they'd like to see on the Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida Twitter page. I'm simply taking the next step beyond that question -- if you learned that using Twitter meant incurring a cost, what could our networks provide that would still satisfy you? It may not happen soon, but it's clearly on the radar. I'm curious as to what our viewing audience feels about the value of the Twitter/Facebook approach.

Comments or questions are welcomed.

Marcin On To The Second Round

2009-05-01T10:41:00.004-05:00

Last night, while driving home from St. Petersburg after the Rays punk'd Boston in the opener of their four-game series, I was listening to game six of the Magic-Sixers series on XM when Philly radio announcer Tom McGinnis casually mentioned that Marcin Gortat was in a contract year. Seeing as how Gortat had just recorded an 11-point, 15-rebound performance in place of the suspended Dwight Howard, my first thought was this: "Great. Now there's NO WAY he comes back to Orlando."

After twenty years in the business, this is where I've arrived -- unable to enjoy the most improbable win of the 2009 NBA Playoffs because I realize that one outstanding performance has just guaranteed that some desperate GM is about to throw stupid money at Orlando's backup center. It'll happen, too. Sigh.

Gortat's breakout performance was only one of about a hundred storylines from that game. There was JJ Redick, who at times this season appeared to be the most miserable human being in Orlando, firing away for 15 points and -- who knows -- perhaps lifting the Eeyore-like rain cloud that's been following him all year.

There was Rafer Alston's 10-assist, 1-turnover night, the final touch on a masterful series for Skip To My Lou: six games, 33 minutes per night, an assist-to-turnover ratio of 4.14 -- 9th-best in the NBA this postseason.

Regardless of where the Magic end up this season, Rafer Alston will not get the credit he deserves. All he did was leave a team (Houston) that he loved, step into a locker room where the chemistry and pecking order was already established, replace an All-Star in the starting lineup, fit in beautifully, keep all the shooters happy, and put up great numbers while leading his new squad to a series win. It's not supposed to be that easy, folks. It's just not.

There was Rashard Lewis, who, if the Orlando print media had anything to do with it, should legally change his name to Rashard Lewis And His Six-Year, $118 Million Contract (it's in there. It's always in there. Scroll halfway down). This is a player who is always the first to arrive on game day, showing up a good thirty minutes ahead of everyone else in accordance with a pregame ritual that he learned in Seattle from Ray Allen (who you might notice is also having a fairly decent postseason). Lewis, the Quiet Man, flat-out put the Magic on his back. Yes, he scored 29, but it was more than that -- as Brian Schmitz noted before getting to the really important stuff about the Six-Year, $118 Million Contract: "Lewis buggy-whipped his team like a 6-foot-10 jockey."

Indeed, he did. With Dwight Howard Tweeting away in a hotel room and Hedo Turkoglu coming unglued late in the ballgame, Lewis just went about his business and won the damn game. It may not fully justify the Six-Year, $118 Million Contract, but perhaps it gives you a better idea as to why the Magic wanted him in the first place.

And then, there's Gortat. The Polish Hammer. The Warlock (one of my personal favorites). A 25-year-old former second-round pick who didn't play his first NBA game until last March. Averaged 4 points and 4.5 rebounds in 12 minutes per game this season. All HE does is pull 15 rebounds in the biggest game of his professional life so far, just a few weeks before his Magic contract is up.

Remember Jerry Maguire catching the eye of Arizona Cardinals GM Dennis Wilburn in the hallway after Rod Tidwell's breakout performance on Monday Night Football? Jerry points at the GM and mouths the words "you are gonna pay." Wilburn, played by singer Glenn Frey, shakes his head and replies, "I know, I know."

After the game on Thursday, I texted a member of the Magic's traveling party with comments to that effect -- "Has the Polish Hammer just priced himself out of Magicland forever?" -- and, well, there was no argument.

Otis Smith, meet Dennis Wilburn.

I can't wrap this up without a special word of thanks to Sixers GM Ed Stefanski, head coach Tony DiLeo, and especially the Sixers TV crew at Comcast SportsNet for relentlessly banging the "suspend Dwight" drum during and after Game 5. Not that they were wrong -- as I told Brigham Avery and Ricky Reynolds on Tampa's CBS Radio 1010 the following morning, I watched the same video as everyone else and agreed that Dwight earned the suspension per the NBA rulebook -- but the rising chorus from the Philly contingent not only prompted some of the most entertaining Stan Van Gundy press conference sound of the year, it was also a clear and obvious factor in motivating the non-Dwights to shove it down their throats in Game 6. I suppose the lesson is to be careful what you wish for, no?

My friend Mike Freeman has already written off the Magic as far as the Eastern Conference Finals are concerned, but that's okay (and I'm not being facetious -- I happen to think Mike is a daring and talented writer, and he's dead-on in his comments about knuckleheadedness, which Turk displayed in spades in the 4th quarter on Thursday). Yes, this team is talented, but yes, they cannot afford brain cramps against better teams than Philadelphia. By all rights, this series should have gone 5 games, max. The Magic should have had at least a few more days of rest before tangling with whoever shall remain standing after Boston and Chicago finally get done killing each other. All of that is true, but all that matters right now is wins and losses.

And that was one memorable win for Orlando, for a variety of reasons.

Weight Of The World

2009-04-24T11:16:00.005-05:00

Just in case anyone is scoring at home:

First, I signed up for my own Twitter page.

Next thing you know, Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida has its own Twitter page.

So now I'm supposed to double-Tweet?

I did, on Wednesday night, during game two of the Magic-Sixers series. Fox has jumped into the Twitter-Facebook-social media world with both feet, asking all of the regional networks to figure out how to utilize these outlets to engage fans.

Interesting note about Wednesday -- I was "signing" all of my SunSportsFOXFL tweets with "@whitwatson," which allowed people to know who was doing the posting and direct them to my personal feed as well.

With zero advance promotion, one or two mentions on-air during the Magic Live pregame show, and one pretty funny segment during the game in which David Steele and Matt Guokas admitted that they pretty much had no clue what I was doing, our Twitter traffic jumped noticably -- about 50 new followers for the SunSportsFOXFL page, and about 25 new followers for me, all during the game telecast.

Okay, I'm sold. But what do we DO with it?

That's the question, and the answer is: stand by. We're still trying to figure that out.

As for tonight's Game 3 -- was anyone else a little curious about Stan Van Gundy's comment after Game 2 that some of his players "look like they have the weight of the world on them"?

Stan made that comment in comparison to his rookie, Courtney Lee, who scored a career-high 24 on Wednesday and played, in Stan's words, "freer and looser." I was surprised that there wasn't more follow-up to that comment in the press room that night.

Why would a rookie be playing "freer and looser" than a group of veterans? Or, more to the point, why would most of Van Gundy's players appear to have "the weight of the world on them?"

I can guess at one of Stan's possible answers -- the veteran players are tight because of all the hype and expectations placed upon them by us dimwitted media types.

You should have heard him at the end of practice on Tuesday. He was in rare form when it came to teeing off on the local media. Nothing malicious, mostly good fun with guys like Mike Bianchi, and it was all off-the-record stuff after the TV cameras had departed, but it was certainly a hint as to Stan's true feelings about the press.

And "press" is exactly what the Magic players, minus Lee, are doing right now. Pressing. Trying too hard. Playing with the weight of the world on them. We can only speculate as to why, but is it possible that it has something to do with Van Gundy's high-wire act on the sideline?

Shaquille O'Neal called it "panic," a word that was repeated in a Polish newspaper by Marcin Gortat, but those are both sketchy sources. For one, it's likely that there was something lost in translation (literally) from Gortat's interview, although he didn't deny the comment. For another, Shaq has a history of napalming bridges once he leaves a team -- he did it in Orlando, did it in LA, did it in Miami (where a lot of people who once worshipped him now refer to him as a "fraud," and that's a direct quote), and will assuredly do it once he leaves Phoenix, which might be sooner than you think.

As Van Gundy himself said back in March, "He's taken shots at [Hall of Famers] Phil Jackson and Pat Riley, so maybe I should consider it an honor." In other words, getting ripped by O'Neal doesn't exactly place one in exclusive company. And for a guy who adopts a different nickname every other Thursday and claims to be working towards A. taking over as Orange County Sheriff and/or B. preparing to purchase the Orlando Magic -- in between naked walks on the beach, something he promised he would do when he came to Miami -- well, Shaq's about as reliable as your 401(k) right now. If he were 5-9 instead of 7 feet, he'd be your screwball co-worker who's got a new hobby every week and is at this very moment trying to sell you MonaVie.

(As an aside, once Shaq leaves Phoenix for his fifth NBA team -- and you better believe it's going to happen -- will he secure the record for Most Teams Played For By A Hall Of Famer? I mean, he's first-ballot Springfield, we all know that, but is there any player already enshrined who played for as many teams as Shaq will have played for? Can someone look this up?)

Anyway, neither Shaq nor Gortat are reliable sources, so let's drop the "panic" angle for the moment. Is it fair to say that Van Gundy, who admittedly treats every possession like his last and has been publicly critical of both his players and his own coaching ability (I've been holding the microphone when he said "I'm doing a terrible job"), has begun to wear on his players? Are they playing tight because they know he's three seconds from ripping them a new one on the sideline? Watch him during a game -- nobody gets disgusted faster than Stan Van Gundy. Is it possible that the vapor-lock demonstrated by most of the Magic players in Games 1 and 2 is somehow connected to SVG's now-elevated-because-it's-the-playoffs intensity?

Again, just asking if it's possible. I can't believe that nobody in that press room on Wednesday had the temerity to try that angle.

It would have been a great question, too, because one thing about Stan -- he would have answered it, and honestly. Like I said, the man isn't afraid to weigh in on himself. If he believed that his behavior had anything to do with the Magic's performance, he would have said so. And it would have been wildly entertaining. But more to the point, it might have broken the ice, and freed up those very players who are currently struggling to find a shot.

Then again, it may simply be that the Magic are slumping at a bad time. But it was worth the question, Shaq's opinion notwithstanding.

One final note -- if the Magic had known that Courtney Lee would turn out to be this good, is there any way that Mickael Pietrus gets a $25 million contract in Orlando?

Let me answer that: no.

I went back and looked up the Magic's draft history. You may insert your own joke here.

No, seriously. As far as lottery picks go, the team has done quite well for itself: JJ Redick, Fran Vazquez (meh), Dwight Howard, Keyon Dooling, Mike Miller, Chris Webber (traded for Penny Hardaway and three number-one picks, utterly brilliant and I will argue this to the death), Shaq, Brian Williams (double meh), Dennis Scott, and Nick Anderson. Some misses, but nothing to be ashamed of as far as lottery picks go.

But players taken by the Magic outside the lottery? Well, you can't count Jameer Nelson (20th overall in 2004), because he was drafted by the Nuggets and traded to Orlando. No, we're well into the Jeryl Sasser - Ryan Humphrey - Reece Gaines conversation now, which has been beaten to death. Short version: their history outside the lottery is not good.

(Personally, I love the '94-'97 run: Brooks Thompson, David Vaughn, Brian Evans, and Johnny Taylor. Mmmmm, tasty. Who'd they miss on in each of those seasons? Not much, it turns out. They could have had Othella Harrington or Malik Rose in '96; Scot Pollard was still out there in '97. '94 and '95 were pretty dreck-y after the Magic picked.)

Point being, "Courtney Lee at 22" may turn out to be just as crucial for the long-term future of the Magic as "Nelson at 20" has been. This kid can play. As I said during the postgame show on Sun Sports on Wednesday night: who would have thought when this series began that Sixers head coach Tony Dileo would be saying after Game 2, "We have to pay more attention to Courtney Lee?"

Enjoy the Magic-Sixers series on Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida, and I'll see you on TV. And Twitter. And Facebook.

Orlando To St. Pete To Orlando

2009-04-16T18:29:00.011-05:00

Blogging from the home of the Rays, Tropicana Field in St. Pete, where I am filling in for Todd Kalas on Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida broadcasts. Always fun to come work these games, but the circumstances -- the passing of Todd's father, legendary Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas -- are far from ideal.

Game tonight (Thursday) after two games on Monday and Tuesday for me; I am off tomorrow and then back here Saturday and Sunday. The crowd tonight is a fraction of what it was earlier this week for the home openers against the Yankees. I sincerely hope the Rays can pull in a few more warm bodies this season; they deserve it.

These random thoughts are in no particular order:

Does anyone REALLY believe that Isiah Thomas will last more than one season as the head coach at FIU?

Look, I admire what he's doing. By accepting this job and donating his first year's salary, he's laying himself bare to the basketball world: "This is my last shot to prove I'm a remotely competent coach/administrator/leader, and I know it." You don't take that job because you dream of winning the Sun Belt; you take that job to set yourself up for the next one.

But as I've written in this space before, Thomas the coach/administrator/leader has never, not once, left a situation better than he found it. Not the Contintental Basketball Association, not the Toronto Raptors, not the Indiana Pacers, not the New York Knicks. Everything that Thomas has touched since he retired as a player, he's either killed or come close to it. He must be one hell of an interviewee, because his resume' is a path of destruction.

That said, I'd love to see him make it at FIU, if (and only if) it proves he's learned the concept of humility. America loves a story of redemption; Isiah Thomas enjoying enough success at Florida International University to land a gig somewhere else -- dare I say Indiana? -- would be about as good as it gets.

But only if he finally 'gets it' in the process.

BTW, I just interviewed Senator Connie Mack in the stands tonight...he and his wife Priscilla are both cancer survivors, and are heavily involved with the Miles For Moffitt road race in Tampa on May 9th. If you're reading this in the bay area, go sign up. Proceeds benefit the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, good things, positive vibe, etcetera.

I have the drive from Orlando to St. Pete memorized now. Ever notice how a long drive seems shorter the more often you make it, up to a point, and then the roller-coaster gently creeps over the peak and said drive turns into Slog City? I'm not at the peak yet. But the track is going click-click-click-click.

I'll be here a lot this summer, working pregame and postgame shows for the Rays as well as shooting episodes of "Inside The Rays," which is a new assignment for me this year. So far, I've enjoyed it immensely. This club is a fun bunch to work with; they're solid people. Great ownership and smart baseball minds.

That said, the NBA Playoffs are getting underway, and I've got the Magic to think about. Sun Sports is televising at least the first four games of the Philly series, possibly as many as six games. Orlando should waste the Sixers; personally, I think the Magic have been laying the weeds for the last couple of weeks, Stan's postgame tirades notwithstanding. To me, it feels like a setup -- the Magic have been overplaying the "nobody respects us" card all season long, and their little swoon in April hasn't exactly struck fear into anybody. I like the fact that players are ticked off at the lack of attention; turn that into defense, and you've got yourself a ticket to at least the conference finals.

Of course, Garnett being out doesn't suck, either. Then again, I've felt all season that Cleveland was the team to worry about, not Boston.

Okay, better go watch some ball. See you on TV -- a lot.

It's Official

2009-04-06T09:47:00.004-05:00

Pretty fascinating exchange going on over at Mike Bianchi's blog, where the Orlando Sentinel columnist is still fielding responses to a piece he wrote on Sunday regarding college basketball versus the NBA.

Mike makes a pretty good argument that the NBA game is a better sport than the college game; having spent the better part of 20 years covering both, I tend to agree. NBA players run faster than college players, jump higher, can catch the ball better, make sharper passes, can get themselves out of trouble at a much better rate, and can make mid-range jump shots. In my view, most of that is a simple matter of age and experience; despite the lamentations about early entry into the NBA Draft, professional players are older and vastly more experienced than college players -- remember, the NBA season is twice as long as the college season, and that means a lot more reps -- and have therefore learned how to maximize their skills. Plus, as one of Mike's readers astutely points out, there are 30 NBA teams with a dozen active roster spots each, while college basketball, at all levels, encompasses hundreds of teams and thousands of players. Obviously, the pool of talent has been pared down, with only the strongest players surviving.

I once asked former Magic GM John Gabriel to identify the first thing he looked for when scouting a college player. His answer: "A baseline of athleticism." In other words, there's a minimum that has to be met before any player can be considered for the pros, regardless of his size, attitude, or particular skill set. He's either good enough or he's not. In my opinion, that makes for a better game on the floor.

If I want to see fans doing funny stuff and kids playing with heart, I'll watch a college game. If, however, I want to see basketball played at its highest level, I'll watch the NBA.

Some of Mike's readers express their affinity for the emotional aspect of college hoops (the "heart") versus the perceived lack of same in the pros, and I won't deny them that stance, although I've been around the NBA long enough to know that there are plenty of professional players who leave their guts on the floor every night (and that list includes star players like Kobe, Lebron, Wade, and Dwight). For that matter, there are guys who dog it in the college game, too. What's more disturbing, although not surprising, are those who still cling to the "thug image" of the NBA. The racial undertone to that sentiment is so obvious, I'm not even sure how to address it. We'd like to think we've progressed on that front, but it's pretty obvious we still have a long way to go.

One point that does bear more attention, however, is the nature of officiating in the NBA. I've never been a "blame the refs" guy, and I know that Bill Simmons at ESPN.com has been all over this topic for a long time, but in covering the Magic and the Heat this season, I cannot escape the fact that NBA officiating has become a completely arbitrary and subjective process. Note that I do not write "they're atrocious," because it's not a question of good or bad. Rather, it's become something that coaches and players have to account for in game planning -- who's calling the game tonight? -- because outcomes of games are unquestionably being decided by judgment calls on the part of the officials. I know, I know, hardly groundbreaking news, but I never paid much attention to it until this season.

Two recent Magic games jump to mind -- the road game at Cleveland on March 17th, and the road game at Miami on March 30th. One was a Magic loss, the other a Magic win, so don't think I'm making excuses for losses. In these two games, Courtney Lee (a rookie) picked up crucial fouls in the closing moments while trying to guard Lebron James and Dwyane Wade (superstars). In fact, Lee fouled out of the Miami game, picking up his 6th with 43 seconds to play, sending Wade to the line for two shots that could have made it a one-possession game (Wade would split the pair). Wade finished the game with 42 points on 10-13 shooting at the free throw line, while no other Miami player attempted more than 5 free throws (in fact, only two other Heat players got to the line at all).

In that Cleveland game earlier in the month, Lebron James went to the line 10 times and made 9, while no other Cavalier attempted more than 2 free throws all night. The Magic, as a team, attempted 13 foul shots in a 4-point loss.

These are two examples of the obvious disparity that every NBA fan recognizes: star players get calls. It happens every night, in every game, every year. Are the referees "bad," or are they simply advancing a system that's become ingrained in professional basketball? And what does it mean for guys like Lee, who is a pretty good on-the-ball defender? Will his reputation grow as a defensive stopper, thereby earning him some leeway down the road, or will he become another Jeff Turner -- a guy who got no respect from referees, regardless of whether or not he actually committed a foul?

(By the way, JT still holds the Magic team record for career disqualifications. Having seen just about every game he played from 1993 through 1997 while I was working in the Magic's broadcasting department, I can assure you he wasn't that bad of a defender.)

The NBA's star treatment is what really galls most sports fans who rage against the league. Theoretically, referees should simply administer the rulebook; in reality, certain players "get calls" while others don't, referees issue "make-up calls" to level the playing field after they miss one, and players with reputations as good defenders (Bruce Bowen, Ben Wallace in his day) are allowed to maul ballhandlers without cost. That, I think, is what turns off fans the most. And like I said, I never really paid much attention to it until this season, when the inconsistencies have become ridiculous. Not sure what can be done about it, but if there is an Achilles heel to the NBA, that's it.

That said, the basketball is much better in the pros.

That Was The Week That Was

2009-04-03T10:41:00.005-05:00

SUNDAY: Arrive on cargo side of Orlando International Airport at 2:40pm for 3pm departure on Magic team charter to Miami. There's our Northwest Airlines-branded chariot, gassed up and ready to go; one need only to park the car next to the Magic's hangar, get wanded and bag-searched by charter service's security detail, and march up the old-school steel staircase into the belly of the plane. Total time, from slamming of trunk to sitting in seat: 10 minutes. Take that, CLEAR card!

Hotel for the Miami trip is the Four Seasons on Brickell, which is okay if you like stunningly gorgeous hotels with breathtaking views of Key Biscayne. Out for dinner that night with my buddy Carlos, a high school friend who has built a very successful OB-GYN practice in South Florida; so successful, in fact, that not only does he deliver a baby shortly before we meet for dinner at Garcia's, he zips back to Mercy Hospital and delivers another one in between dinner and drinks. Seriously. We had just arrived at a local sports bar to say hello to the rest of the Magic broadcast crew when Carlos got the phone call; he was back at our table before anyone had finished dessert. David Steele, Matt Guokas, and the rest of the crew were very impressed. Having known Carlos since we were in 7th grade, I'm still stunned that anyone actually granted this kid a medical license, but that's another story entirely.

MONDAY: Game day. I get up early and head for the health club on the 4th floor of the Four Seasons for a 7:45am power yoga class that doesn't start until nearly 8, thanks to the late arrival of our instructor, who appears to have stepped off the pages of a fitness magazine. She has the demeanor of a drill sergeant and the flexibility of Gumby. I will feel pain tomorrow.

Sun Sports TV crew meets at a local breakfast joint off Brickell to discuss that night's broadcast, with special attention paid to the fact that our halftime will be extended due to a jersey retirement ceremony for Alonzo Mourning. We're told that instead of the NBA-standard 14 minutes, the Heat have petitioned for 24. Nobody believes we'll stick to that number. I retire to the hotel room to write the pregame show, which takes me a couple of hours (jotting notes by hand onto a format provided by the pregame show producer, using my laptop to dig up research). Given the view out the window and the early arrival of my yoga-induced soreness, I decide that hanging out in the hotel room is pretty much going to be the agenda until the bus rolls for American Airlines Arena.

Arrive at Triple-A shortly after 5pm and scope out my press seat, which is two rows off the floor and right next to the Magic bench -- pretty much grade-A real estate for a sideline reporter. Say hello to Eric Reid, Tony Fiorentino, and Jason Jackson, the Sun Sports crew in Miami. The over-under on 'Zo's halftime has now been set at 30 minutes. I'm taking the over.

And I was right. 43 minutes from start to finish, with speeches from Pat Riley, John Thompson, Patrick Ewing, Governor Charlie Crist (greeted with a smattering of boos, oddly enough), and Alonzo himself, who turns the whole thing into a Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech. Stan Van Gundy is livid about the delay. From the locker room, he keeps asking Magic PR Director George Galante to provide updates on how long it's taking; George has entrusted the Sun Sports production truck to keep a running clock. I'm serving as messenger. We hit the final number of 43 minutes. Both teams are looking tight and anxious. What a delightful decision to do this at halftime as opposed to before or after the game.

One note on the game itself: Dwyane Wade has officially surpassed Kobe Bryant and Lebron James as the most-respected player in the league among NBA officials. Courtney Lee fouls out trying to check Wade, who goes for more than 40 while getting every call imaginable. I hate to sound like a Kool-Aid drinker -- and remember, Sun Sports is the home of the Magic AND the Heat, so I've got two dogs in this fight -- but Wade's treatment is laughable. Honestly, it's a joke. You can pick up two quick ones just for looking at him cross-eyed. Breathing on him would probably cost you two shots and the ball. It was one of those nights that gives credence to the conspiracy theorists who claim that the refs fouled Dallas out of an NBA title in 2006. Yet, Miami loses, because they have absolutely nothing behind Wade, while Orlando gets big plays from Rashard, Dwight, and Turk in the final minutes. That's called depth.

Highlight of the flight back to Orlando: Dwight Howard gets on the PA and launches into one of his infamous comedy routines, delivering impersonations of former Magic player Brian Cook (spot-on), Van Gundy (not as good as I had been told), and Magic owner Rich DeVos (hilarious). Biggest laugh from the traveling party comes when Howard, as Van Gundy, notes that Wade is averaging 60 points a game this season against the rookie Lee (not quite, but close enough). When your superduperstar franchise player skewers you in front of the team, you've gained acceptance, and it's pretty cool to see how Lee has become an integral part of this team. He's worked for it, and he's earned it.

The flight back to Orlando takes about 35 minutes, which is actually shorter than 'Zo's halftime ceremony. I mention this to Van Gundy as we depart the hangar, and he agrees enthusiastically. Having done my part to give the man a chuckle, I climb behind the wheel and head for home.

TUESDAY: Sleep late. Roll into downtown office around lunchtime to record some voice-over for an upcoming Tampa Bay Rays feature (see how quickly I did that? NBA to MLB. Boom.) Return home, pack up the car, and get on I-4, heading west to St. Pete, where I have to stop by the Rays' offices to get my photo taken for a season credential (they've warned me that trying to get this done any closer to their home opener on April 13th would be sketchy at best). From there, it's across the Sunshine Skyway bridge to Sarasota, where I will catch up with Mrs. Watson and the kids at the in-laws' house, where they have been visiting for the last couple of days. 6am wake-up the next morning in order to make it to Port Charlotte by 8am, where we are scheduled to interview Evan Longoria and Scott Kazmir for upcoming Rays productions. Wasn't I just doing a basketball game?

WEDNESDAY: Damn, I hate waking up early. South on I-75 to Port Charlotte, the new home of Rays spring training. The facility there is pretty terrific -- six fields plus a practice infield, weight rooms, meeting rooms, kids' play areas, a 'party deck' beyond the outfield fence complete with tiki-hut concession stands, all brightly painted in the Rays' blue-and-gold color scheme, gleaming and ready for a new season. All of the Rays' minor leaguers are in camp with the big club, so there are dozens upon dozens of young men taking cuts in the cages, working out on the outer fields, what have you. Joe Maddon will later say that the advantage of the new Charlotte Sports Park arrangement is having "everyone under the same roof and on the same page," and it's obvious what he means. This feels like a major league club.

Longoria sits down for his interview at 10am; we are producing an episode of "Inside The Rays" featuring the All-Star third baseman. He is slow to warm up, but excellent once he gets going. Kazmir is also good. He looks bigger. I'm told he devoted himself to an off-season workout routine, and I believe it.

Leave before the game starts at 1pm, drive 20 minutes to find a place to eat lunch (not much going on in Charlotte County, folks), and then head back to Sarasota. Celebrate mother-in-law's birthday with dinner at an Italian place on Siesta Key. Drive home, arriving 10:30pm. Sleep as if drugged.

THURSDAY: Up at 7am (meh) to attend Board of Trustees committee meeting at the alma mater, Trinity Prep in Winter Park. Drive across town to Wayne Osley's loft studio to record new radio spots for upcoming Magic broadcasts. Back in the office at 2pm for a "webinar" on Fox's new performance review process (still fascinated by Live Meeting technology). Record more tracks for upcoming Rays productions in our newly soundproofed voice-over booth at the downtown office (means nothing to you, but a very big deal for us). Make it to son's flag football practice by 5. Mexican take-out for dinner.

FRIDAY: Head to Florida Hospital to visit with Magic and Rays TV producer Kevin Patterson, laid up with a bizarre case of strep that spread to his lungs and caused pneumonia, a freak illness that has hospitalized him for over two weeks and necessitated surgery (really). We discuss the Rays spring training shoot, the Magic's loss to Toronto, and the upcoming matchup with the Lebrons. I deliver him a copy of USA Today and three more magazines to replace the ones I brought him last week -- I know he's bored out of his mind. Hoping they'll let him go home this weekend. Return to downtown office and bang out a blog entry, something that I have had increasingly less time to accomplish each week.

Tonight, Magic vs. Cavs (just watching at home, not working this time). Next Tuesday, Lightning home game vs. Penguins (working). Week after that, the Rays open at home against the Yankees (very much working).

And that's a pretty typical week.

A New Fish Tank

2009-03-24T13:16:00.004-05:00

After ten years of trying, it looks like they finally did it: the Marlins may get a new stadium after all.

I write "may" because, despite the successful votes in Miami and Dade County, we've all been around the block enough to know that these things aren't done until they're done -- or at least, until the concrete starts to rise from the earth, as is already the case with the Magic's new building in Orlando.

(On that note, you have to scroll down more than 30 paragraphs in the Miami Herald story to find this little nugget: "If the county, city or Marlins can't find proper financing by July 1, any of the entities can kill the deal." Umm, hello? Shouldn't that be a little closer to the top of the story?)

It's a minor miracle that the Marlins were able to pull this off in light of Florida's current economic reality -- and judging by the number and tone of reader comments attached to the Herald article, a lot of folks in South Florida are skeptical, to say the least.

During the groundbreaking ceremony for the Events Center in Orlando back in July of 2008, one Magic executive admitted to me privately that had the Orange County Commission vote been delayed by even a few more weeks, there would have been a very slim chance of completing the deal. And that was in July -- still a couple of months away from the bottom falling out of the markets.

So, again, the Marlins deal is pretty stunning.

From a baseball standpoint, there's no question that the Marlins needed a new park. Dolphin Stadium, while a lovely facility for football, was never well-suited for baseball, and it's my opinion that the building itself has a lot to do with the team's notoriously poor home attendance (lowest average in the majors in each of the last three seasons, 28th out of 30 in 2005, 26th in '04 -- you get the idea). Mind you, it's clean, relatively safe, and easy to find on the highway, but it's not a 'ballpark,' and it's not a destination for baseball fans along the lines of a Fenway, or even a Turner Field.

The team's abysmal home attendance has long been used as a touchstone by those who opposed a new ballpark in South Florida. However, I dispute the notion that there's no interest in the Marlins in South Florida, based mainly on something I deal with every day -- TV ratings.

Win or lose, the Marlins and the Rays (even before their American League pennant-winning season) have delivered the most consistent television audiences for Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida over the last few years, ahead of our NBA and NHL telecasts, and well ahead of any studio show or other original programming. On a local and regional level, baseball is a ratings powerhouse. So I know there's interest -- even if it's from the living room.

So the question becomes, will a new stadium -- in the same oft-maligned neighborhood where the Orange Bowl once stood, but sporting a retractable roof (read: no rainouts) and all the amenities of modern-day ballparks -- draw South Florida fans out of their homes? The Marlins are banking on it, in much the same way that the Magic are banking on the Events Center.

But again, that assumes that the stadium actually goes up in Miami. Stay tuned.

Teeing It Up At Tavistock

2009-03-18T09:59:00.005-05:00

So I witnessed a Col. Nathan R. Jessep moment at the Tavistock Cup yesterday.

The Tavistock event, for those who have better things to do, is an annual two-day Ryder Cup-style golf tournament between members of Isleworth Country Club and Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, both located in Orlando and both owned by British billionaire Joe Lewis and his Tavistock Group. It's become one of the hottest tickets in town, mostly because said tickets cannot be purchased. The Tavistock Cup is invitation-only, so you gotta know somebody or know somebody who knows somebody.

One of the great attractions of this event is the intimacy. With a crowd that probably barely exceeds 4,000 people and nearly unrestricted access to the course and the players, it's a rare opportunity to see the best players in the world up close -- and I mean *really* up close. I literally had to take a step backwards on the 14th tee at Lake Nona yesterday to give Tiger Woods room for a practice swing. And yes, I'll be repeating that line for the rest of my life.

The Tavistock people absolutely lavish the players with every conceivable perk and luxury, up to and including the now-iconic helicopter rides back and forth between the two clubs:

...which is pretty cool, I have to admit. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

In an effort to provide these elite players with a relaxed, collegial environment, Tavistock insists upon no cell phones or cameras anywhere on the property. It's printed on the badges, in the programs, and on the pairing sheets. One cannot miss it.

Yet, this crowd being what it is, everybody ignores that policy and brings cell phones and/or cameras. Fortunately, the marshalls who work the course aren't naive, especially the ones who walk with Tiger's group. They know full well that a snapshot of Tiger at close range would be worth the risk of flaunting Tavistock's policy, and they also know that seeing Stevie throw a well-heeled patron into Lake Nona might speak ill of the event.

So every time Tiger stepped onto a tee box yesterday, the marshall would step forward and announce loudly, "Please put down all cell phones and cameras." In fact, he said it at least twice. In other words: please put away the cell phones and cameras that we ordered you not to bring, lest Tiger and his caddie become irate.

First thing I thought of when I heard that? Lt. Daniel Kaffee nailing Col. Jessep to the wall: "If you gave an order that Santiago wasn't to be touched, and your orders are always followed, then why would he be in danger? Why would it be necessary to transfer him off the base?"

This is how my mind works, by the way. My wife reeeeeeeeeaaallly hates watching movies with me.

Anyway, seeing Tiger up close is pretty fascinating, especially in relation to all of the other star players in close proximity. Every eye on the golf course is fixed on Woods, and he's got to know it. So, too, do the other players, who I think secretly enjoy the fact that he's there to divert the attention. What struck me the most, other than the ridiculous skill level of every player in the event, is the 'normalcy' of Woods while in the company of fellow pros.

On that same tee where I had to step back to avoid a Nike driver to the noggin, Woods and Charles Howell III were discussing how long it would take them to finish the round (they had a long wait on the tee, as the 14th at Nona is a drivable par-4). Apparently, their over/under on completing the round had been set at 5:45pm; it being about 3:45 in the afternoon at the time, and with only 5 holes to go, Woods was convinced that his selection (the under) was a mortal lock. Apparently, Woods had somewhere he was supposed to be later that evening.

(There may or may not have been actual money riding on this over/under; I couldn't gather from their conversation if this was just for fun or if they had actually put a bet on it. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there was actual coin on the line. Tour pros are notorious for betting on anything and everything during practice rounds, and the rumor out there yesterday was that the unofficial handle between players, while not approaching the 'official' $3.5 million purse, was plenty big enough. But that's just (ahem) a rumor.)

As the 5:45 over/under discussion heated up, Howell turned to Woods and said, "Pards, you're toast." He then promised to take 30 minutes over every tee shot from that point forward and grind over every putt like it was Sunday at Augusta. Tiger cracked up. It was the kind of needling that you and I would do during a Sunday afternoon round at the local muni, up to and including the speculation on whether or not we'd be home in time for dinner (and avoid the evil eye from the missus).

It was just guys playing golf. Only it wasn't just guys, it was Tiger Freaking Woods and Charles Howell III, two professionals whose combined career earnings exceed $120 million (that's mostly Tiger). The fact that all of this occurred within earshot of civilians like me and my two golf buddies in attendance is what makes the Tavistock Cup so unique. I guess you had to be there. I'm glad I was.

Tournament Time

2009-03-16T10:28:00.004-05:00

Cheapest round-trip ticket from Orlando to Boise, according to Expedia: $654, including taxes and fees. Meh.

So much for that.

The wild hair was prompted, of course, by Cornell's second straight Ivy League title and subsequent bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Big Red earned a little respect this year, once again receiving a 14-seed, earning a first-round matchup with 3-seed Missouri. As my friend and fellow alum Jeff has pointed out, at least we're not dealing with 14 feet of Lopez twins, as was the case last year when Cornell jetted to Anaheim to get throttled by Stanford.

This year, it's 28-6 Mizzou, champions of the Big 12. Their RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is 10, which means the Tigers have played just about everyone up to and including the Lakers and Celtics this year. Cornell's is 115, meaning, well, we played the Ivies and Ursinus.

(Actually, there were some decent games on the Big Red's calendar this year -- an 11-point loss to St. John's, a 10-point loss to a ranked Syracuse team, non-conference wins over La Salle, Boston University, and Eastern Michigan. Plus, they beat Harvard, Princeton, and Yale at least once and beat Penn twice, which is all we really care about anyway.)

As fate would have it, Boise is also the first-round destination for Florida State, a 5-seed in the East, facing 12-seed Wisconsin. Seeing the Seminoles in the Big Dance for the first time since 1998 at the same venue where Cornell makes a second consecutive appearance would have been fun, but not $654 worth of fun (plus hotel).

I have, however, been to Boise, and it's lovely. Honestly. Much rockier and mountainous than you probably think.

While I'll be rooting hard for Cornell to make a game of it against Mizzou, I've got a keen interest in how Florida State does in the tournament. I've had the good fortune to call a couple of their games for Sun Sports over the last few seasons, including one this spring, and they strike me as an official Team Nobody Wants To Play. Their defense is downright salty -- among the ACC leaders in field goal percentage allowed and scoring defense all season long -- and they've got some depth (I love Ryan Reid). They're long, big, energetic, cohesive, and have Toney Douglas, who is precisely the kind of Bryce Drew - Juan Dixon - Shane Battier experienced-leader-type who could shoulder a team throughout the tournament. In short, a perfect recipe for the NCAA's, especially when you consider that they don't have to score to win. I really like their chances of a Sweet 16 or even better.

Of course, our fair state's sexiest team, Florida, is NIT-bound for a second straight season, which has created its fair share of hand-wringing among the Nation. Those who follow the Gators closely look at the roster and mouth the word "thin" -- literally and figuratively.

In a weak year for the SEC, Florida was the worst rebounding team in the league, and sported the lowest blocked shot average in the conference as well. That's been the largest concern for Florida all season -- a lineup that is thin, as in not much depth, as well as a lineup that is thin, as in physically unable to prevent themselves from getting pushed around. The Gators need size, and they need glue guys. In short, they need what Florida State had this year.

(Sidebar: if this season taught us anything about Florida basketball, it should be a testament to how special that Noah-Horford-Brewer-Green squad was. We may never see such a combination of size, skill, toughness, and cohesiveness in college hoops ever again.)

Anyway, root for the Red, and watch out for the Noles. That is all.

High School Hoops Finals

2009-03-09T13:41:00.003-05:00

(Click for Sun Sports broadcast schedule of 2009 FHSAA boys' and girls' high school basketball finals replays)

While still feeling dreamy over Cornell's second straight Ivy League title and automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, a summary of my fifth trip to Lakeland for play-by-play duties for the FHSAA boys basketball state championship games (in the order the games were played):

Class 1A: Orlando Christian Prep wins again, in a 3-point nailbiter over Boca Raton Grandview Prep. UCF signee Keith Clanton goes for 16 and 14. He's a player. Very polished, no wasted energy. Not sure what position he'll play for Kirk Speraw at UCF -- he's a legit 6-8, but needs more bulk to play the 4 -- but he'll be a factor immediately. Former Lake Howell and USF star Reggie Kohn earns his first state championship as a head coach and was very appreciative. OCP still hasn't lost a game against 1A competition in the last two years -- and Grandview Prep came into the game with a perfect 28-0 record.

3A: Pine Crest of Ft. Lauderdale goes back-to-back, beating Orlando Jones 60-44. Junior star Brandon Knight, who is atop everyone's wish list for 2010 (UConn, Duke, Florida, you name it), delivers 27 points and 9 rebounds on volume shooting (7 for 23). Jones shoots themselves out of this game by going 2 for 25 from downtown, scoring only 7 points in the 2nd quarter and 7 more in the third. Knight is pretty special, but he will certainly benefit from another year of high-level high school competition. Senior Ed Waite, who will play at Monmouth (NJ) next season, is the underrated star of PC's championship team, with 13 points and 11 rebounds in the final.

5A: Terrific game between Gainesville High and Clearwater High, two programs whose tournament histories date back to the 1920's. Tremendous energy at the Lakeland Center with vocal crowds. Clearwater outscores Gainesville 19-13 in the final period to make it close, but Gainesville had enough to hold them off. First state title for the Hurricanes since 2000, their fifth overall. These two teams were number 1 and 1A in the classification all season long, and they delivered a game worthy of their lofty rankings.

2A: Arlington Country Day, again. The powerhouse from Jacksonville ties a state record with five consecutive state championships, all under head coach Rex Morgan, who played with Artis Gilmore at Jacksonville University and has created an absolute dynasty at ACD. Three players at ACD are already committed to Division I programs, about to join the eleven Apache alumni currently playing college ball at that level. This game went to the "mercy rule" running clock in the 4th quarter. Summit Christian of West Palm Beach gave it all they had, but they didn't hold a candle to ACD's size and talent. Hat tip to Emari Bailey, who graduates with five championship rings, having been on the ACD roster since the 8th grade.

4A: THE game of the weekend. Cocoa High rallies back from a 16-point deficit to win by 15. Seriously. Springstead High, a school in Hernando County that has never won a state championship in any sport, brought in a 31-0 record and a fabulously smooth senior named Isaiah Mason, but they couldn't match Cocoa's depth. CHS head coach James Rowe told us before the game that he believed his was a team of destiny, and by the end of the game, we believed him. The Tigers outscored Springstead 49-23 in the second half to give Cocoa a second basketball championship (first since 1960) and a rare double-dip -- the Tigers also won a football title this past fall. Eight players on the basketball roster were also on the state champion football team. How's that for a high school year? Of note to other coaches: the Tigers practiced at USF's Sun Dome before going to Lakeland to get their kids accustomed to the depth perception challenges inherent in playing in a cavernous arena. Result: 52% FG overall, 5-10 from downtown, and a state title.

6A: Can you call it an upset when both teams had to play the same number of games to get there? Orlando's Olympia High was the top-ranked team in 6A for much of the season, but they fell to Miami's Coral Reef HS 69-60. Truth? I've never heard of Coral Reef. It's a magnet school in Miami with a stellar academic reputation -- an "A" rating by the State of Florida in 10 of its first 11 years of existence -- but no state titles in anything until this season. Remember this name: Charles Hankerson, Jr. Only a junior, but drawing interest from VCU, Florida State, and Auburn, among others. His stock went through the roof after the final -- 27 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists. His point guard, Steven Lopez, had the best handle of anyone I saw in Lakeland. A really, really fun team to watch, and head coach Gaston "Chachi" Rodriguez, a gravelly-voiced firebrand at just 38 years of age, was their Pied Piper. Olympia brought an (ahem) enthusiastic crowd and a regal bearing as one of the top teams in the state, but got outplayed and probably outcoached. Second-best game of the weekend after Gainesville-Clearwater.

Congratulations to Bill Koss for jumping in to a very tough assignment and nailing it as a color analyst. Also, keep an eye out for Jessica Blaylock, who joined us this year as a sideline reporter and just killed it. She's going places, fast. Great weekend all around. Sun Sports will begin replaying all of these games, plus the girls' title games, on March 16th.

Neener, Neener, Neener.

2009-03-06T23:59:00.001-05:00

Let's go Red.

Let's go Red.

Let's go Red.

Let's go Red.

The Right Call

2009-03-02T14:01:00.007-05:00

Mark Wise's attention was divided this weekend.

As I've mentioned before, Mark and I have now called more than 50 high school basketball state championship games together for Sun Sports, including the six girls' finals we recorded this weekend in Lakeland. We're on our fourth or fifth year together, but next week, when the boys' finals come to the Lakeland Center, our run will be interrupted.

Mark's son, Matt, is a sophomore forward for Transylvania University, a Division III program in Lexington, Kentucky. The Pioneers play in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC), whose conference tournament was this past weekend at the Beck Center, Transy's home gym.

After holding off Anderson University in the semifinals on Friday night, the Pioneers squared off against Franklin College for all the marbles on Saturday. Throughout the weekend, Mark was constantly checking and re-checking his cell phone for text messages from his wife, University of Florida head volleyball coach Mary Wise, who was providing abbreviated play-by-play from the gym in Lexington -- usually, updates on Matt's playing time: "He's in."

At one point during the weekend, I knocked on Mark's hotel room door in Lakeland to find him squinting at his laptop, trying to decipher a grainy webcam telecast of the Transy game. He pointed to a dark blob on the Pioneers' bench -- the back of a player's head -- and said proudly, "that's Matt."

How could he tell? Because he's a dad. Anyone with a kid will understand.

On Saturday night, as Mark and I watched Miami Norland and Lake Mary duke it out for the Class 6A girls' title, the Transylvania Pioneers spotted the Franklin Grizzlies a 14-point lead before storming back to win, 76-72.

Matt Wise played 2 minutes, committing one foul and one turnover. Hey, at least he's in the boxscore.

It was the third time in four years that Transy has won the HCAC tournament title, earning the Pioneers an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III tournament. They'll open against Guilford on Friday at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

And there's the rub.

Friday and Saturday of this week, Mark and I were scheduled to call the six boys' high school state finals in Lakeland. Knowing this -- and knowing how much of a challenge it would be to find a color analyst who could handle six games in two days -- Mark had prepped me to the possibility of his son's advancement to the NCAA's.

He called me during the week, before the girls' finals, to ask my advice on how to handle it with Sun Sports if, indeed, Transylvania would be playing during the boys' finals. Mark was really concerned about this, torn between the possibility of his son reaching the postseason and his obligation to an assignment that he had agreed to carry out. How, Mark wondered, would Ned Tate, the executive producer for Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida, react if Mark tried to beg off the boys' games?

So I told him what I knew to be true: Ned, a parent (and recent grandparent) himself, wouldn't blink. He would tell Mark to get himself to Danville, Kentucky, for God's sake, because it's his kid, and how many kids make the NCAA Tournament? Who knows if he'll ever get there again?

"Don't think twice about it." That's what Ned would say. Which, I'm pleased (but not surprised) to report, is exactly what happened.

So Mark and Mary Wise will make their way to Danville this weekend to see Matt Wise and the rest of the Pioneers make their bid for glory. Bill Koss, longtime UF basketball broadcaster, will join me in Lakeland for the boys' championship games.

(Bill, if you're reading this -- get some rest and save your voice. Six games in two days, baby. Pack a multivitamin.)

As we were leaving the girls' 6A game on Saturday night, I told Mark, "I'm sorry you won't be here next week, but I'm thrilled that you won't be here next week." I'm sure that Ned feels the same way, and for that matter, so does Mark. Only a parent would understand.

Go Pioneers.

Tweet: Ref's Whistle, Or Verb?

2009-02-24T13:25:00.004-05:00

So now I have my own Twitter page, which is not the same thing as the Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida Twitter page (which I guess I'm supposed to contribute to), which is completely separate and distinct from my Facebook page, which is, of course, not this blog.

Am I overextending my cyber-reach? Have I outkicked my Internet coverage?

Coming up this week: the FHSAA Basketball Finals in Lakeland, one of my favorite events of the year. Girls play this weekend, the boys the next. Mark Wise and I are on the call for the 3rd, 4th, or 5th consecutive year (I've honestly lost track).

Between the FHSAA tournaments and various and sundry men's and women's college basketball games over the years, Mark and I figure we've worked well over 50 games together. Incredibly, we're still speaking to each other. Did I mention that Lakeland has not only a very good Irish bar downtown, but an excellent steakhouse?

Perhaps I should Tweet that.

See you at the Finals.

The Diesel and the Daily Double

2009-02-17T10:13:00.003-05:00

Shaquille O'Neal's tour de force performance at the 2009 All-Star Game left me wondering: what might have been different for the Miami Heat for the last three seasons if O'Neal had been (ahem) healthy?

At some point last week, The Big Cactus hopped into the Wayback Machine and became The Diesel once again. From his inspired introduction with the Jabbawockeez -- who knew he had such mad skillz? -- to his spritely performance in the game itself (17 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and co-MVP honors in less than 11 minutes of play), Shaq played with the vigor of a man 10 years his junior. Quite frankly, he delivered the type of performance that we might expect from Dwight Howard.

On that note, perhaps the single most entertaining act of O'Neal's epic was the one-on-one moment with Howard in the third quarter, when O'Neal nutmegged The Daily Double with an entry pass to a posting Chris Paul, then took the feed back from CP3 on a give-and-go for an uncontested baseline dunk. What's harder to see in the video is Howard smack-talking O'Neal just seconds before that play.

There was a similar moment last month in LA, when I followed the Magic to host the pregame show before they took on the Lakers. In that game, Howard got caught on the wing one-on-one with Kobe after a switch, but rather than run from it, he embraced it -- big smile, bobbing head, an 'all-in-fun' vibe as he talked a little junk. Kobe, of course, being Kobe, took it personally, and launched a stupid fadeaway jumper, which was precisely what Howard hoped he would do.

But that was a regular-season game, and this was an All-Star Game, so if Howard had baited O'Neal into taking a three (or something equally preposterous), nobody would have cared. However, this time was different. Nobody seizes the moment like The Big Aristotle -- especially in fan-driven scenarios like All-Star Games. Hence, the bounce pass through the wickets and the dive to the basket. Shaq simply out-funned Dwight. It was one moment in a meaningless exhibition game that features zero defense and even less strategy, but it caught my attention.

It was the Master reminding the Student: I ain't dead yet. And you ain't me.

Someday I will tell my grandchildren how lucky I was to personally witness the early years of both Shaquille O'Neal's playing career and those of Dwight Howard. I was a Magic employee for three of O'Neal's four seasons in Orlando; in my current gig, I cover Howard and his mates every week.

For a random and probably meaningless stat comparision, here are their first four seasons in the NBA after both were drafted #1 overall by the Orlando Magic:

O'Neal ('92-'96): 27.1 ppg, 12.3 rpg, 2.7 bpg, 37.6 mpg, 57.9% FG, 54.1% FT, appeared in 295 of a possible 328 regular-season games

Howard ('04-'08): 16.5 ppg, 12.2 rpg, 1.7 bpg, 36.0 mpg, 56.3% FG, 61.0% FT, appeared in 328 of a possible 328 regular-season games

Lesson 1: In case anyone forgot, O'Neal was an absolute monster right out of the gate.

Lesson 2: Howard, who didn't have the benefit of any college competition (and took a while to grow into his current physique), is arguably just now arriving. Howard just turned 23 years old and is playing his 5th NBA season; by the time O'Neal turned 23, he was in his 4th NBA campaign, but had three years of college hoop at LSU under his belt. Probably not a fair comparison.

As of this writing, Dwight Howard leads the NBA in offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, and blocked shots, while O'Neal never finished any of his 16 previous NBA seasons as the league leader in any of those three categories (although he is the NBA's active leader in career offensive rebounds). Sun Sports senior producer Jamie Shapiro was also quick to remind me that when it comes to rebounding titles, O'Neal in his prime had to contend with something that Dwight Howard will never face -- Dennis Rodman, in his prime. Rodman, whose prowess on the glass was single-minded and legendary, led the league in rebounding average every season from 1991 through 1998, a stretch that encompassed O'Neal's first six seasons in the league. I suppose we can give Shaq a temporary hall pass, although I still believe that he could have led the league in blocked shots and/or rebounding at any time in his career, had he only made up his mind to do so.

Lesson 3: Howard was far more durable in his first four seasons than O'Neal was over the same span of his career. Shaq missed 33 games from '92-'96; Howard (knock wood, Magic fans) didn't miss a single game in his first four seasons, and has missed only two this year. As I alluded to earlier, it's somewhat staggering to think of what O'Neal's numbers would be today had he stayed just a tad healthier over the last 16 seasons. Not a lot healthier; just a little.

Entering this season, O'Neal averaged 66 games per year in non-lockout seasons (ironically, he played in 49 of the league's 50 games in the shortened '98-'99 campaign). He appeared in only 40 games in the '06-'07 season, the year after leading the Miami Heat to an NBA title; for that matter, he only played 59 games during Miami's championship season. You have to wonder what Miami might have done in the spring of '07 had O'Neal been at full speed, and whether or not he'd still be there today.

Shaq, in his typical Shaqtastic fashion, has credited the Phoenix Suns' training staff for his apparent rejuvenation at the ripe age of 36. Whether you believe that or something more conspiratorial, the fact remains that he's played in 44 of Phoenix's 51 games this season as of this writing. Had he been able to turn in just a handful of 82-game seasons -- something he's never done in his pro career -- his Hall of Fame-level stats would be even more staggering.

On that note: sixteen-plus years in the NBA, career averages of 24.9 ppg and 11.3 rpg, four rings. Basketball-Reference.com lists Shaq as one of five active players with a 100 percent chance of reaching the Basketball Hall of Fame; the others are Duncan, Kobe, Garnett, and Iverson. Lebron is currently at 99.92%. They're all once-per-generation players.

(So where's Howard? Not on the list, yet. The website's model requires a minimum of 400 games played, and Howard is currently at 377. If he stays healthy (again, knock wood), Dwight will play game number 400 on April 1st, 2009 (really!), against Toronto, at home. Be sure to check Basketball-Reference.com on April 2nd.)

Dwight Howard could very well finish his NBA career with numbers that approximate O'Neal's -- and trust me, the only stat that Magic GM Otis Smith cares about is "number of championship rings" -- but I'm just as curious to see if Howard develops into the pure showman that O'Neal has become. Say what you will about Shaq's forays into rap music and acting -- and honestly, what can we say about 'Kazaam' that hasn't already been said by the greatest of men? -- but you have to admit, there aren't many Hall of Fame-caliber athletes who could pull off anything remotely close to what O'Neal has done.

Brett Favre in 'There's Something About Mary'? Michael Jordan in 'Space Jam'? Please. O'Neal's combination of athletic credentials and legit skill as a performer is unique. It's not that Howard doesn't have charisma or charm; he does, in spades. He's a breathtakingly gifted basketball player with a terrific personality, and will be a franchise player for as long as his body holds up. O'Neal, on the other hand, is a larger-than-life phenomenon. There's a difference. The fairest comparison to O'Neal is probably Lebron -- who, based on his current body of commercial work, I would totally believe as a leading man, a rap artist, or the newest member of the Jabbawockeez.

But hey, Howard's young. His possibilities are endless.

(Just hoping it's not 'Steel II'.)

Billy D and the Boy Blunder

2009-02-12T11:12:00.006-05:00

So let me get this straight: a young, brash coach with no no D-I track record brazenly kicks open the door to the staid old SEC, raises eyebrows by landing recruits that he wasn't "supposed" to get, and irritates opposing fans and the conference establishment in the process?

Who does Lane Kiffin think he is -- Billy Donovan?

Save your e-mails, Gator fans. Donovan never ran his mouth the way Kiffin does, and I know it.

However, there are similarities between the young man that Florida hired to coach men's basketball in 1996 and the young man that Tennessee just hired to start coaching football in 2009 -- the most obvious being the word "young." Donovan was 31 when he left Marshall to move to Gainesville, and Kiffin took over the Vols at the tender age of 33. Both were supremely confident, and dismissive of the time-honored SEC tradition among coaches of aw-shucksing your own team while portraying the opposition as invincible.

(Sidebar: Urban Meyer immediately picked up on the second half of that formula -- every week we hear how "that's a very well-coached and physical football team over there" -- but he's not the type to downplay his own squad. His M.O. has been "they're really good, but our guys kick ass." Hard to argue.)

Where Kiffin and Donovan diverge, however, starts with track record prior to their current positions. Donovan played four years under Rick Pitino (including a trip to the Final Four as a starting point guard), had a cup of coffee as an NBA backup, apprenticed for five more years with Pitino at Kentucky, and won a conference title at previously lowly Marshall -- all before the age of 31, and all before Florida hired him.

Kiffin, on the other hand, was a backup QB at Fresno State who gave up his senior season in order to become an assistant coach. He later became a position coach at Colorado State, a 'quality control assistant' for the NFL's Jaguars, and eventually the offensive coordinator at Southern Cal before landing the head coaching gig with the Oakland Raiders in January of 2007 -- coincidentally, at the age of 31.

Pretty impressive stuff for a man of that age. Then came the 4-12 season in Oakland, the 1-3 start in '08, the mondo bizarro press conference with what appeared to be a paper mache' version of Al Davis, and the end of the NFL road for Kiffin.

It's fair to say that, prior to becoming a head coach in the SEC, Billy Donovan had a far more successful playing career and head coaching career than Kiffin; it's also fair to say that a coaching staff of Don Shula, Jimmy Johnson, Bill Parcells, Tom Landry, and Amos Alonzo Stagg probably couldn't have done much better with the pile of waste that Davis assembled in Oakland and dumped in Kiffin's lap in '07.

The other area where Young(er) Billy D and Current Lane Kiffin differ is in the space below the nose and above the neck. Donovan had no problem using his considerable oratory skills to explain his recruiting successes or defend himself against charges of crossing the line; in fact, he seemed to enjoy it, as it gave him the opportunity to spread the gospel of hard work and dedication. If anything, Donovan helped himself in recruiting every time he was quoted -- because to him, every quote was an opportunity to promote the program.

Kiffin, on the other hand, seems to labor under the impression that he's got to take shots to prove his mettle. Maybe he's still smarting from the media whuppin' he took from Crazy Al; maybe he thinks that being "brash" (in the way that Spurrier was brash) will ignite a Tennessee fan base that's been lulled into a torpor by the last decade of Phil Fulmer. Indeed, Kiffin said that very thing -- that he was trying to "excite" the Tennessee crowd that showed up for a Signing Day breakfast.

Kiffin has already been tagged as "The Boy Blunder" by more than one media type (check here, here, and here). The fact that Kiffin inserted his Florsheim into his mouth at about the same time that Pat Summitt was winning her unfathomable 1,000th game at Tennessee didn't help matters much.

(Lane. Can I call you Lane? Lane. Honey. Sparky. Sugar-pop. I've never been to Knoxville, but let me give you a piece of advice: don't ever -- EVER -- get in the way of Pat Summitt at Tennessee. In anything. Ever. I'm trying to help you here. Remember all those bogus Chuck Norris - Tim Tebow facts? Pat Summitt wrote all of them on the back of a cocktail napkin before practice at one of her 18 Final Four appearances, then checked them off -- "Done it...did it...been there...did it twice..." If you need any help understanding this, go knock on Bruce Pearl's door.)

Somewhat lost in all of this, however, is the root cause of the Kiffin-Meyer dustup: the fact that Nu'Keese Richardson, the Pahokee product who was a Florida commit since forever, bought what Kiffin was selling and jumped to UT. There was also the small matter of Janzen Jackson, the #2-ranked cornerback in the country, who spurned LSU in favor of Tennessee at the final hour -- this after spending 12 months as an LSU "commit," and spending his entire life as a resident of Lake Charles Freaking Louisiana.

Call him what you will, but Kiffin can apparently recruit.

Great article (and the impetus for this entry) in Sports Illustrated this week on Kiffin and the staff he's assembled in Knoxville (tried to find a link, but I guess they want you to buy the magazine first. Meh). Every hire, up to and including former Ole Miss head coach Ed Orgeron and Kiffin's legendary father Monte, was made with an eye towards recruiting. Lance Thompson was considered to be Nick Saban's top recruiter at Alabama. Kiffin reportedly tried to pry Billy Gonzales off of Urban Meyer's staff while Florida was preparing for the BCS Championship Game. He also threw a ton of money (unsuccessfully) at Mark Richt's top recruiter at Georgia.

He may not 'get it' when it comes to grace or tact, but he sure as hell 'gets it' when it comes to college football -- it's all about talent, and you get talent by winning recruiting wars.

Coaches and schemes do not win titles. Players do. If I've learned nothing from hanging around with Brady Ackerman for the last five-plus years, I've learned that.

Billy Donovan knew it over a decade ago when he stormed into living rooms that once were the province of North Carolina, Kansas, Duke, and UCLA. Urban Meyer has known it since his days at Bowling Green, and has proven it (twice) at Florida. Now comes Kiffin. Brash, fearless, convincing, relentless. Yes, he's acted like a goob, but there's at least a tinge of method to the madness.

If nothing else, he just made the SEC a heck of a lot more interesting.

Home, Finally.

2009-02-08T21:30:00.003-05:00

At around 11pm eastern time on Thursday night, I took a breath for the first time since September.

I happened to be in Baton Rouge to call an SEC women's basketball game between LSU and Arkansas. It was the third of three 'volunteer' games I did for Fox Sports South and SportSouth, the two Fox-owned regional sports nets based in Atlanta. I had that date circled on my calendar for months -- not because of the game itself, but because of what it represented.

A break.

Ever since the Rays reached the World Series, I've been pretty much non-stop. More travel in the last four months than at any other stage of my career -- from Rays coverage in St. Pete to Magic road trips to a variety of college basketball games in Gainesville, Tallahassee, Charleston, Chattanooga, and yes, Baton Rouge. As I've written before, I'd be a fool to complain about too much work, but it's been exhausting.

Thursday night was the last stop on the odyssey. I'm not flying anywhere this week. Not for a while, as a matter of fact. The next big thing is the FHSAA high school basketball state championship games, which begin in Lakeland at the end of the month. Until then, I get to sit in my (new) office and chill for a while.

Feels pretty good.

Road Diary: Charleston

2009-01-24T22:35:00.005-05:00

Charleston is weird. There, I said it.

I'm here as a volunteer. Some months ago, I floated an idea in front of the Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida management: I need reps as a play-by-play guy. Let me get in touch with some of the other Fox regional sports networks, I suggested, in the hopes of picking up a few games. It's a testament to their vision and generosity, and a compliment to the Fox regional sports network business model, that I'm in Charleston, South Carolina, having just called the play-by-play for The Citadel vs. College of Charleston on SportSouth. Next week, it's Georgia Southern against Chattanooga. The week after that, an SEC women's game between LSU and Arkansas. There are no losers here.

That said, Charleston is weird.

In my 20 years on the air, I've been lots of places, but I've never been as lost as I've been in the last 24 hours. Seriously, you can't get anywhere in Charleston, and when you do, you can't park. Wacky. The saving graces this weekend were twofold: one, The Citadel is cool, and two, we had one hell of a game today.

My color man was Nate Ross, who has served as an assistant coach at The Citadel as well as being a former member of Bobby Cremins' staff at App State, way back in the day before Cremins made his bones at Georgia Tech. For those who don't know, Cremins, who spent a few years in semi-retirement on Hilton Head Island, got bored with his golf and walking his dog on the beach about three years ago and took the head coaching gig at College of Charleston. When we saw him today, he looked like, well, Bobby Cremins -- white hair, dyspeptic attitude, New York style. It was like jumping into the Wayback Machine.

On the other sideline today was Citadel head coach Ed Conroy, first cousin of Pat Conroy, the former Citadel point guard-turned-author who penned such classics as "The Great Santini," "My Losing Season" (his account of his senior year on the basketball team at El Cid), and "Lords Of Discipline," the book that earned him a virtual lifetime ban from campus at The Citadel for its thinly veiled destruction of his alma mater.

You have to hear this story.

Pat Conroy played basketball at The Citadel in the late 60's. His father, Don, a former Marine fighter pilot, was pretty much a bastard, by all accounts (including Pat's in "The Great Santini"). Don's brother had a kid named Ed, who was a pretty good basketball player. When Ed was looking at schools as a high school senior, he was recruited hard by The Citadel, who saw his combination of grades, character, and skill as the perfect formula for a Bulldog basketball player. Never mind the Conroy last name.

So Ed signs with El Cid. During his freshman year, he is asked over and over again if his father is Pat Conroy. Bound as he was by the school's honor code, he says, honestly, "sir, no sir." Eventually, someone gets wise and asks him, "are you RELATED to Pat Conroy" -- the same Pat Conroy who was totally blacklisted by The Citadel for his rip job of the school in "Lords Of Discipline."

Again, bound by honor, Ed answers: "Sir, yes sir."

Thus begins a year of hell, over and above the year of hell that is already a guarantee for the knobs at The Citadel. Ed gets singled out for "extra discipline," as they call it. In other words, he gets hammered.

But he stands his ground. In fact, by the time he graduates from El Cid, he has risen to second in command of the South Carolina Corps of Cadets, a position that, according to The Citadel, has never been achieved by any varsity basketball player, before or since.

As Pat Conroy would later put it: "my cousin navigated this place as well as anyone could do it. And I navigated this place about as poorly as anyone could do it."

Fast forward to today. Pat and Ed are tighter than tight, despite the history, despite the fact that Don, the late "Santini," clutched Ed to his breast the way that he never did with Pat, something that the author could have held against his 20-years-younger cousin eternally, if he so chose. But he didn't.

In fact, they are so tight that Pat has now been welcomed back into the Bulldog community, is a season-ticket holder, and has let those bygones be, well, you know. Oh, yeah, and this: The Citadel beat College of Charleston today, breaking a 13-game, 7-year losing streak against the Cougars, moving themselves to 5-4 in the Southern Conference, one year after a 1-19 mark in the SoCon. In other words, Ed Conroy has quintupled his win mark in the conference from a year ago, and it's not February yet.

Are you starting to understand why I put up with the schedule, the travel, and getting lost in weird cities to do this job? It's because of stories like this. Where else can you learn stuff like that? What's better?

Tomorrow, it's back to Orlando, and a full week ahead. Lightning hockey, more SoCon basketball, some Orlando Magic thrown in. I don't love being away from home and my family, but I love the stories. It makes it worthwhile.

Even if I hate getting lost.

Road Diary: LA to Denver

2009-01-18T14:23:00.001-05:00

Magic TV play-by-play announcer David Steele had a great idea for a full-screen graphic during Saturday night's Fox Sports Florida broadcast of the game at Denver.

It was a list of "Reasons Why The Magic Should Lose This Game." With tongue firmly in cheek, David and Matt Guokas came up with a stellar list of cliches and bits of 'conventional wisdom,' familiar to anyone who has followed the NBA for any period of time:

1. Second game of a back-to-back after a hard-fought win (in this case, against the Lakers).
2. Arrived at the team hotel at 4 in the morning.
3. Final game of a successful road trip; in addition to fatigue, there was the 'complacency' theory, as the Magic had already won the first three games in San Antonio, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. The players might be checked out by now.
4. The Nuggets were already 5-1 on a seven-game homestand -- grooved, confident, riding high.
5. Altitude. Denver, as you may have heard, is 5,280 feet above sea level. A mile high, as it were. East coast teams -- especially east coast teams that A.) were on the last day of a week-long road trip, B.) were on the second half of a back-to-back, and C.) checked into their hotel at 4 in the morning would get absolutely gassed by all this altitude. Seriously, you can't swing a dead cat in Denver without hitting some altitude. Denverites (Denverians?) can't wait to tell you about their altitude surplus.

If this sounds cynical, it is. David and Matt were cracking wise, coming up with plausible explanations that we knew head coach Stan Van Gundy would debunk. In fact, that was sort of the point. They double-dog-dared me to ask him about one or all of these factors during his pregame interview, and Coach Van Gundy held serve, commenting that "you play the schedule they give you" and basically destroying each and every bit of so-called conventional wisdom. Call him "The Great Debunker."

In fact, when asked about the altitude, he dropped this one on me (I'm paraphrasing): "I studied exercise physiology in college, and I know for a fact that being a mile high isn't high enough. I once played basketball in La Paz, Bolivia, which is three miles above sea level. A mile high isn't high enough to make a difference."

Well, then. I've been Debunk'd. As I commented when we used that sound bite on the air, "you can't argue with science." By the way, we used the graphic during the broadcast, too. Right about the time that the Magic were up by 15 in the fourth quarter.

One of the reasons why this idea seemed so funny, and so appropriate, when preparing for the final game of the Magic's four-game western swing was the fact that those of us who cover this team have learned never to doubt its resiliency. "Resiliency" is an otherwise innocuous word that has been bastardized by the sports media into something pretty stupid -- when an NFL team has to play a game the week after one of their star players gets arrested on a weapons charge, that team is labelled as "resilient," as if they had to spend the entire week in group therapy, crying it out, just to muster enough courage to put on their cleats.

No, this Magic team is 'resilient' in an entirely different light. They just keep hanging around, hanging around. They're always in the game, regardless of score -- and they're rarely down by much, anyway. There's something about this current incarnation of the Orlando Magic that stays in touch with the leaderboard, no matter what hole they're on, no matter what their swing looks like on that particular day. And to torture the golf analogy a little further, this team can rip off a string of birdies at any moment: Jameer Nelson's 15 points in the fourth quarter on Friday night to get them back in the game against the Lakers, Dwight Howard's defense and rebounding (with three fouls) late in the Denver game to deflate the Nuggets. This team is never out of it, and they know it. They don't get desperate. They just keep coming. We all saw it up close on this magnificent 4-0 road trip, and that's why the graphic, and the questions to Stan, struck us as clever. An inside joke, I guess. By the way, if Jameer Nelson isn't named a reserve on the Eastern Conference All-Star team, I'm asking for drug tests from every head coach in the conference.

In fairness, the Magic did catch a few breaks on this trip. The Kings have abandoned any semblance of defense, enthusiasm, or hope. The Lakers and the Nuggets did all they could to shoot themselves out of their respective games -- go check the boxscores for Kobe, Kenyon Martin, and J.R. Smith for evidence of what I'm suggesting. I don't believe that we saw best efforts from any of the four teams Orlando played this week, although San Antonio wasn't exactly stinking up the gym.

However, one could turn that around and suggest that the Magic's defense harrassed both LA and Denver into some bad shots on one end, and on the other end, all those threes have to go down -- and they did. That's something. As Van Gundy told me after the game, the 42% figure from beyond the arc on Saturday night in Denver would be considered outstanding by just about any team in the league, but to his crew, it felt kinda average. That's confidence. Belief. Resiliency. Call it what you will. Be sure to also include the phrase "most wins in the Eastern Conference," as of this writing.

I'm putting the finishing touches on this entry while on the team charter back to Orlando. ETA is about 5am eastern time -- this after we landed in Denver at 4am mountain time on Saturday morning. Sleep would be good. The schedule-makers at the NBA thankfully gave the Magic four days off before the nationally televised Boston Celtics game at Amway Arena on Thursday night, and then it's a 50-minute flight to Miami to face the Heat on Saturday, followed by two more home games the following week. Having already dispatched San Antonio, LA, and Denver on this trip, the Southeast Division-leading Magic get Boston and Cleveland soon, offering up the delicious possibility of beating five division leaders in the span of two weeks.

Improbable? Certainly. Worthy of national attention? Definitely. But if this team continues to fly under radar, no worries. Van Gundy's recent declaration that "if you don't think we're that good, that's okay with us" is on point. This team knows it's good, and that's what matters.

Or, as the coach is also fond of saying, "you are what your record says you are." As a pregame and sideline host, I'm 7-0 on the road with the Magic this season, which ought to count for something.

The Magic themselves? 33-8, people. Thirty-three and freaking eight. Not even the Great Debunker can argue with that.

Road Diary: Sacramento to LA

2009-01-14T19:59:00.002-05:00

I've been to Sacramento exactly once before, about 12 years ago. It hasn't changed much.

The team hotel was across the street from the state capitol building, which was surrounded by very pleasant-looking gardens. Other than that, not much going on around here. One could have fired a cannonball down the sidewalk on Monday night and not hit a soul. Kinda spooky, actually.

The game on Tuesday night, of course, saw the Magic break an NBA record for three-pointers in a game, with 23. George Galante, the team's PR director, is on this trip, and was passing info to the Sun Sports broadcast crew throughout the night as the 3's started to fall with startling regularity. First, a record for made three-pointers in a half; then, the franchise record was in sight; next thing you know, we're creeping up on history in the 4th quarter.

My vantage point for the game was about as close to the bench as I could possibly be without wearing sneakers. Some arenas are very good to the sideline talent in this way; others are not. I was grateful to be at Arco Arena in this case, which has the feel of a high school gym (and about the same sized crowd). It's a damn shame to see what's happened to the fan base in Sacto. When I was there 12 years back, the old barn was the loudest, most electric gym in the league. Now, the fans seem to come only out of morbid curiosity -- how much worse can the Kings get? -- and spend their time heckling their own players with as much creativity and enthusiasm as they direct towards the visitors. And for this one game, anyway, the Kings deserved it, as they appeared desultory at best, and downright disinterested at worst. Rumor has it that the Kings are quietly planning on out-tanking the Thunder in order to obtain a better draft choice (and the value that goes along with it), which fits in nicely with the theory that the Maloofs are purposefully allowing Arco to rot as they angle for public monies for a new building (or a potential move to Vegas). These are not good times for basketball fans in Sac-town.

However, there was a pretty friendly group of fans sitting behind my work table, and I began chatting with them on these and other topics -- after all, they had nothing else to do. At some point during the game, it became obvious that the Magic were raining threes all over the place, and one fan leaned over and asked how many Orlando had made. At the time, they were up to 18, which had tied a franchise record. Another fan asked me what the NBA record might be. At about that time, George walked over with the answer -- 21. So now, our little motley crew in the corner was aware of the situation. I would later learn that George was clandestinely informing assistant coach Bob Beyer about the totals, while studiously avoiding the topic with Stan Van Gundy, which was probably smart.

One more three goes down -- the Magic really were in the zone, although I cannot overstate how small of a crap the Kings seem to give about defense right now -- and we're up to 19 on the night. Our little corner starts to buzz. Mickael Pietrus, in a suit with a cast on his wrist, looks at us inquisitively. The fans tell him where the Magic stand. As if to verify this sketchy information, he looks over at me, and I confirm it -- two to tie, three to break. Pietrus's face lights up. He's a very light-hearted dude, and this situation is enormously entertaining to him.

Another three. 20. One to tie, two to break. The word has now filtered down the bench, like a whisper campaign. Pietrus told Dwight, Dwight told Rashard, Rashard told Jameer. At least four different people, including Coach Beyer, have grabbed JJ Redick by the collar and told him to shoot the damn ball as soon as he gets it, to the point that Redick is waving them off. The players on the bench are now up on their feet. Van Gundy, who has sort of gathered that something is going on over his shoulder, puts Brian Cook into the game, and Pietrus wheels around, points at me, and says in his Caribbean lilt, "you watch -- Cook will get it! Cook will get it!"

And within seconds of entering the game, Cook gets it. The bench erupts. Our little corner, me and the bored, sociable fans from Sacramento, consider high-fives, but I think better of it. We feel like we had a hand in this, however small. We were the ones who told the bench, after all. Van Gundy, veteran coach that he is, now knows exactly what's going on, and even as I see him tell his players "I don't care about that stuff," he's got a sneaky smile on his face. This is kinda fun, even for an NBA head coach.

Very chatty flight to LAX that night. To every fellow basketball junkie, I wish I could bestow upon you about 24 hours of what it feels like to work and travel with a winning team. There's nothing better in this business, period. The Magic are 31-8 and apparently bulletproof. Jameer Nelson is playing like an All-Star, Courtney Lee is a Magic late-first-rounder that (gasp!) has exceeded expectations, Rashard Lewis can't miss, and nobody -- nobody -- in the NBA has an answer for Dwight Howard. Of course, it could all vanish tomorrow, like my short game, but it's wonderful while it happens.

So here we are, laid up at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, waiting for the Lakers on Friday. This is only about the most wonderful location on Earth in which to cool one's heels while waiting for a basketball game. The Atlanta Hawks were staying here last night as well, having flown in late after their loss to Phoenix, which created a cosmic convergence of autograph seekers, groupies, and "cousins" in the lobby when we arrived at 1am. The Hawks just bussed out to Staples for their game tonight against the Clippers, while the Magic traveling party still has another full day off tomorrow before Friday's tilt. From there, immediately to Denver for a game Saturday night, and back to Orlando (4:15am estimated arrival on Sunday morning) to complete the 4-game trip. But I'm not there yet.

Right now, I'm watching the sun set over the Pacific, wishing my wife and kids were here to see it, wondering where I'm going to find a slab of fish for dinner, and following a winning team. Things could be much, much worse.

A Gator Nation Celebration

2009-01-08T22:32:00.008-05:00

Why clutter up the Allstate Sugar Bowl game with excessive Allstate commercials when you can hold a camera shot on the "Allstate" logo on the netting behind the goalposts for an extra second after a made PAT or field goal? Or, if that's too obvious, you could always focus in on the Gatorade coolers on the sidelines for an extra couple of seconds -- they'll get the message.
Don't think for a second that Allstate and Gatorade didn't pay for that.

There's a new movie coming out called "Taken" -- perhaps you saw the ads during the BCS Championship Game on Fox -- but just in case you were making a bathroom/kitchen run during the break, the giveaway/takeaway stats were sponsored by "Taken." See, that way, you can't miss it. Plus, it's clever.

The one lesson I've learned from watching all the BCS bowl games on Fox over the last week is this: someone at our corporate headquarters in LA has finally been clued in to the dangers of TiVo. Or perhaps they've been watching European soccer, where the constant action forces sponsors to somehow ingratiate themselves into the broadcast itself.

If the message is embedded into the game, the message cannot be missed. We've seen a ton of this during the BCS bowl season, and given the aforementioned advances in viewer technology and our impatience for anything commercial, I expect we'll be seeing a lot more of it in the future, regardless of who's producing the games.

Like most of you, I watched the BCS Championship Game at home, in HD, close to my own bathroom and kitchen. While I was disappointed at the fact that I was not in Miami for any pregame or postgame coverage -- a topic better left untouched -- there was value in it for me as a media guy. Even more valuable was the chance to see how Florida was covered by the "national" media (although my friend Charles Davis, who once again provided exceptional color commentary for the BCS title game, lives here in Orlando).

I am awful to watch TV with. In particular, you really don't want to watch sports with me. I say this because I am a brutal critic of game production, from graphics to camera angles to commentary to embedded advertising. It's just too familiar. I also have a really annoying habit of calling the penalty before the referee can even reach for the flag, something my wife called me on during the BCS game in Miami.

"How do you SEE that?" she asked. "What are you looking for?"

I shrugged. You call a lot of high school football state championship games, you learn to recognize holding. Sometimes it's simply where the flag was thrown and the body language of the player involved. It's a matter of reps.

Which brings me to the telecast itself. Thom Brennaman and Charles Davis have worked together quite a bit as the lead football broadcast team for the Big Ten Network (which is partially owned by Fox, the parent company of Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida). Charles is one of my favorite people to listen to, not only because he's a friend, but because he's never unprepared. Brennaman, who I do not know personally, gave it his mortal best (and with that voice, his best is pretty pleasant to listen to), but it was evident that he had to coach himself up on the SEC's Gators and the Big 12's Sooners prior to the game. Had Ohio State or another Big Ten team made the BCS title game, I'm sure that Brennaman's vibe would have been much more relaxed and familiar. Trust me, I've been there. Charles, who has lived in Orlando for years and has covered the SEC in the past, was much more at ease. Again, that comes with reps.

The announcers aside, the broadcast wasn't one of my favorites. Someone at Fox is completely enamored with the marching bands (it wasn't just Miami, either -- all of their BCS bowl broadcasts featured multiple cutaways to the bands). While I love marching bands as much as the next guy, and recognize that those kids work very hard and rarely get any pub, that's not what I'm looking for in a bowl game. And after the 47th look at the woodwind section, my apathy drifted towards resentment. Plus, the Oklahoma fast-break offense made it very difficult to squeeze in replays -- which, while not the fault of the production crew, was still tough to watch. At some point, I wouldn't have minded if the director cut his losses and quit trying to jam in the replays.

That said, the quad-screen look at the Sooner offense -- the OC in the booth in one pane, the coaches flashing dummy signals towards the field in another, Bradford and the offensive players looking over at the sideline in a third, and the wide shot of the formation in the final window -- was brilliant. Truly told the story of how the Sooners' offense works.

All in all, a solid show, but there's something about watching college football on Fox (that's "Big Fox," as we call it, the Fox broadcast network, as opposed to any of their regional sports networks, like ours) that leaves me cold. Hard to put a finger on it, but it just feels like they don't love it as much as we do. Changing the color scheme on the Fox NFL Sunday set (in Los Angeles, 3000 miles from Miami) and sticking four different guys out there didn't inspire me, either -- and it also made a statement about how seriously Fox was taking this game, which is to say, not seriously enough to travel their studio talent to the game and let them do their pregame/halftime/postgame stuff on the field, as typically befits any 'championship' game.

One caveat: Jimmy Johnson, who doubled up from his NFL duties to appear in the studio before and after the Oklahoma-Florida game, proved that he could be an A-list college football analyst tomorrow if he wanted to. Then again, I'm sure the money is much better in the NFL.

Now: the game.

Rather than repeat the gigabytes of analysis already available, or try to come up with some angle that nobody else has considered, let me instead direct you to that sage of sages, UConn women's head basketball coach Geno Auriemma.

After winning one of his five NCAA women's basketball titles at UConn, Auriemma was asked "what was the difference" in that year's championship game.

His answer was equal parts simple and deep: "The difference was that we had Diana Taurasi, and they didn't."

The difference this past Thursday? Florida had Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin, and Oklahoma didn't.

College football is about coaching, and technique, and scheme, but mostly, it's about players. And the bottom line is, Florida had two players that Oklahoma could not account for. Tebow and Harvin. If you think this game was about anything else, you're not necessarily wrong, but you might want to watch a bit more closely.

Tebow will probably stay for his senior year, but Harvin, I think, is gone. This Florida team, as we know it, will likely never pass this way again. We should consider ourselves lucky to be around to see it.

Florida had Tebow and Harvin, and Oklahoma did not. That, friends, is the genesis of this most recent national title. Good show, indeed.

By the way -- this Sunday at 1pm, I will host the Gators' championship celebration live from the Swamp, broadcast on Sun Sports. This will mark the 6th such parade - slash - pep rally that we have enjoyed in the state of Florida since I moved back home to Orlando in 2003:

2004 Stanley Cup Champions: Tampa Bay Lightning
2006 NCAA Basketball Champions: Florida
2006 NBA Champions: Miami Heat
2006 BCS Champions: Florida
2007 NCAA Basketball Champions: Florida
2008 BCS Champions: Florida

So I'm up to my sixth national championship celebration on live television. Let the good times roll.

Where Have You Been?

2008-12-28T16:26:00.021-05:00

Loyal readers of this blog (yes, both of you) may have noticed that since the beginning of college football season in September, my posting rate here has fluctuated somewhere between "glacial" and "nonexistent." There are a multitude of reasons for this, not the least of which has been my work schedule, which has been mildly brutal -- although not solely as a result of college football season, as many of my friends assume.

Going back to the beginning of September, I flipped through the pages of my old-school DayRunner (I am not a CrackBerry guy, and doubt I ever will be) to see what's been wearing me out. Here's a partial list of what I've been doing and where I've been assigned since the start of September:

* 5 live college football pregame shows, on location in Gainesville, Miami, or Tallahassee

* 15 episodes of "Tailgate Overtime"

* 13 pregame and postgame shows (for a total of 26 shows), either on location in St. Petersburg or in our studio in Orlando, for the Tampa Bay Rays' postseason run through the World Series

* 4 hosting assignments for Orlando Magic broadcasts on Sun Sports, including a 3-game midwestern road trip in November (with a 4-game west coast trip coming in January)

* 4 play-by-play assignments for men's and women's college basketball in Gainesville or Tallahassee

* 8 play-by-play assignments for the FHSAA high school football state championship games on Sun Sports or Fox Sports Florida

That's 64 individual events that I have hosted since September 1st -- and that's just the day of the show, not the several days of preparation (research, writing, etc.) that go into each one. Also, this list does not reflect any of the "Inside The Magic" shoots, which, while not 'live,' require just as much time and effort to prepare -- usually about ten days per show, when you factor in edit time. This list also fails to include meetings, conference calls, speaking engagements, radio interviews, media availabilities, and general office time. Oh, and I also flew to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, and won two Emmys.

So yeah, I haven't posted much.

Don't think for a millisecond that I'm so tone-deaf towards today's economic reality that I'd be stupid enough to complain about being overbooked. Quite the contrary. I'm happy to have the work, as it certainly beats the hell out of the alternative. However, it means that I've been mostly too busy or too tired to spend any time here on the college football stories of the season, or on the beginning of another NBA season, or much of, well, anything. Which sucks.

But I plan to change that...someday. New Year's resolutions and all that.

In the meantime: what the Magic are doing right now is incredible (and criminally under-reported nationally), the fact that the Heat have already exceeded last year's win total deserves more attention than it received, Florida State's win at the Champs Sports Bowl shouldn't be taken too seriously (but is, indeed, a positive sign), I'm not at all sure that Florida can beat Oklahoma (but won't be surprised if they do), and my golf game is so atrocious I cannot comprehend it without wincing.

I promise I'll be back if I ever have time.

The Finals, Finally

2008-12-17T21:08:00.003-05:00

I've been completely out of pocket this week thanks to the FHSAA high school football finals -- eight games in one week. I've barely had the time to pick my head up.

I did interview Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford in Orlando a couple of days before the Heisman balloting was announced. Bradford comes off as very young. He looks like he's about 12 years old in person.

Tebow was chipper. Bubbly, even. I'm sure the fact that Dan Mullen had been announced as the new head coach at Mississippi State just hours before Tebow sat down with me had absolutely nothing to do with Tim's mood. I'm also sure that his answer to me about returning for his senior season -- "I think I might have a few more games to play in the Swamp" -- was just a throwaway line. Meant nothing, really. The enormous smile on his face when he said it was just Tim being Tim.

My read? He's coming back, and Mullen's departure only reinforced his decision. Not that they didn't get along, but if Tebow has any hope of playing quarterback at the next level -- something he's been increasingly vocal about in the last few weeks, if anyone has noticed -- he'll have to take a snap from under center once in a while, and he'll have to prove he can throw the down-the-chimney deep ball that NFL coordinators crave. Thus far, he's done neither, because he never had to. Mullen's departure, while perhaps not necessarily a catalyst for changing the entire Florida offense, could very well afford Tebow the chance to do some things next season that would prove his merit as an NFL quarterback. And frankly, if he wins another national championship for Florida, in addition to the Heisman he already has and the one he'll probably win next year if he returns for his senior season, my view is, the Gators will owe him one. Big time. Enough to tweak the offense (again) to showcase his skills as a passer.

BTW, I voted for Tebow, again. Had Bradford second, and McCoy third. I cannot conceive of a logical argument for leaving Tebow off the ballot entirely, as many of my fellow voters apparently did. Vote him third if you want to, for Pete's sake...but leaving him off? Absurd.

You know what's going to be one of the most underrated bowl games of the year? The Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando between Wisconsin and Florida State. Seriously. That might be a more interesting game than the Capital One Bowl at the same stadium a week later. Go buy you some tickets.

Check back with me after the second weekend of high school football.

Bling.

2008-12-07T12:22:00.006-05:00

2008 Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards
December 6, 2008
Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel, Orlando

Pretty good haul for the Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida crew.

L to R: Keith Haeberle and Amber Tollefson, based in South Florida, were honored for their work with the "Inside The Heat" series; Lynne Mixson picks up an award for "Inside The Magic: Gameday All-Access," and John Powell earns the nod for the 'baseball cap' promo campaign. I'm the one on the right who barely grazes John's elbow.

I was part of the five-person team that won for the "Inside The Magic" episode, and also part of the three-man entry behind "Under The Lights: Stories of Courage." Thus, double-fisting it at Shingle Creek.

Several of us who were listed on winning entries were not present at the ceremony; big thank-you's to Mike Wargo, Bryan Harden, Mark Rickles, Brett Opdyke, and everyone at Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida who contributes their piece of the puzzle every day.

Thanks also to executive producer Ned Tate and GM/VP Cathy Weeden for giving us the tools and the freedom to do what we do; as fruits of labor go, those little statues ain't bad.

I was also nominated in two categories for which I did not win: Sporting Event/Game - Live/Unedited (as part of the Orlando Magic broadcast crew) and On Camera Talent - Sports Talent. In the Live Game category, there were no Emmys awarded this year. They can do that at the regional level -- no matter how many nominees there are in a category, there may be one winner, two winners, all winners, or no winners. You're competing against a standard, not against each other. Very important distinction from the national Emmys. Anyway, nobody won the Sporting Event/Game - Live/Unedited category, while the On Camera Talent - Sports Talent category had one winner, who was, umm, not me.

You know how you hear actors say "it's an honor just to be nominated"? It's really true. I was humbled just to be there.

But winning doesn't suck, either.

The Playoff Manifesto

2008-11-28T23:19:00.005-05:00

Okay, here it is.

Jerry Maguire once wrote a mission statement -- "it's not a memo" -- and his career derailed as a result. But that was a movie, and this is real life.

I woke up (before my alarm) at 6am on Friday morning so that I could get into a rental car in my in-laws' driveway in the glorious (and frigid) Berkshires of Massachusetts, get lost, and then eventually find my way to the airport in Albany, New York. From there, I flew to Charlotte, spent four hours on a layover, wrote my scripts for the Sun Sports pregame show prior to the UF-FSU game, and then hopped a puddle-jumper to rainy Tallahassee. Now, I'm in a hotel room, about to crash after several days of non-sleep, having seen the hottest team in college football wipe out the Seminoles on the road, after which I ate some barbecue and enjoyed a hellaciously good Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game on TV.

Seriously. This is my life, in a nutshell. Still think it's glamorous? Meh.

So here's the point: no matter what happens tonight, or this season, our prospects of determining a true national champion in D-I college football -- via a playoff -- are not good. And it's partially your fault. Not entirely your fault, but partially.

Stick with me.

Rather than start from the beginning, which, like strikeouts, is boring and fascist, let's start at the end -- how important is it to you, really, to crown a true national champion in D-I football?

Take a moment, please, and ponder that question without bias or predisposition. What are the costs and benefits? Put another way: what are you willing to give up to get there?

Consider this a negotiation, and here's where I'm coming from: I'm in a hotel about two minutes off the interstate in otherwise sleepy Tallahassee, and every room is booked for the entire weekend. The TGI Fridays next door was a zoo on Friday night. We're in the middle of nowhere -- and this might as well be Stillwater, or Austin, or Lubbock, or Gainesville -- and the place is packed. All for a regular-season college football game that meant absolutely nothing to either team in terms of conference play.

So why are we here?

Because it was UF-FSU. It's a big damn deal. For bragging rights, and conversations at the bar, and fun. For hype. For chatter. But not for any national title, unless you count Florida's chances of reaching the BCS title game.

Because it's a rivalry game. It's the kind of game that moneyed alumni savor. It's the kind of game that compels a group of well-heeled attorneys and mediators to spend God-knows-how-much on tickets, hire a private plane, and fly from Orlando to Tallahassee to sit in a parking lot and wait for the rain to stop, which it never did. But they were thrilled to be here. By the way, I just described my parents.

And that notion -- spread out to Stillwater, or Austin, or Lubbock, or Gainesville -- is the reason why we'll never see a playoff in our lifetimes.

Now, most of us will never travel to a game in that fashion. Most of us (who aren't working at the game, as I did today) will scrimp and save and reserve our weekends just to make it back to campus for one special regular-season game, so that we might enjoy the spirited atmosphere of a home college football weekend. We'll e-mail our friends and ask if we might see them there; we'll come home with tall tales about who we saw, and what the noise was like, and how great it was to see the X's beat the hell out of the Y's. We relish these opportunities to create memories.

But those moneyed boosters? The ones who, sorry to say, really drive college football? The ones who get their names on buildings, roads, and stadiums? They REALLY love these weekends. It's the center of their social and business lives. They glad-hand with the AD's, and get swooped and dived upon, and sit in spacious suites and feel a connection to these young student-athletes who have little idea who they are. Doesn't matter -- it's special. It's emotional. It's visceral.

Now: what if, instead of playing for a conference championship or a bowl berth -- two antiquated notions that nonetheless appeal to the old money that makes college football the most truly passionate sport in America -- what if these teams were duking it out for a berth in a 16-team ladder? Would these weekends have the same appeal?

If you're reading this, you're probably not T. Boone Pickens or Bill Heavener, so let me ask it another way -- would you spend your entire year planning ahead for UF-FSU if you knew that the outcome had little effect on either team's chances at winning a national championship, positively or negatively? If the goal was not a perfect season, or a berth in the SEC or ACC Championship game, would you care as much?

If you're being honest with yourself, the answer is unequivocally "no." And the university athletic associations, AD's, and television networks who profit dramatically from conference title games and bowl games know it. The sports talk radio hosts who drive our conversation know it. The buildup, the hype, the "what if" that precedes every big college football weekend is incredibly powerful. It's the essence of college football today. The result of the game is almost immaterial -- the hours of chatter that precede the game are what define the game as we know it. And a playoff, though it would produce a true national champion and end the arguments about "who would beat who" definitively, would render all of that irrelevant.

And that, friends, is why we'll never see a playoff in our lifetimes. Ever.

Money, as always, talks. True, a playoff ladder would produce incredible TV ratings, but not at the level of what regular season games, conference title games, and bowl games can produce. And that's why the playoff talk is just talk.

Unless.

Unless you're willing to vote with your pocketbook. If you really think that the endgame of college football should be a true, unanimous national champion, you must be willing to give up some of the warm-fuzzy feeling that college football's regular season produces every weekend. If you're willing to donate those memories, a playoff is a real possibility.

So: are you ready? Do you really want it? Enough to render bowl trips irrelevant? Enough to make regular-season games, like tonight's OU-OSU thriller, a mere rest stop on the highway to a true national championship game? Are you willing to refuse to book airline travel, hotel, dinner reservations, and tickets to the Whatever Bowl in mid-December in an effort to throw your support to a playoff?

Are you ready? Is that what you want? Or do you enjoy the experience of college football too much?

I think I know the answer. The concept that there's a 'demand' for a playoff is a myth, as long as regular-season games continue to sell out and wealthy boosters keep putting their names on buildings. They ain't naming stuff for playoff teams; they're naming stuff for wins over rivals, conference championships, and bowl wins. They're naming stuff for memories and sentiment.

Television networks draw weeks upon weeks of eyeballs and sponsorship dollars through building up regular-season meetings that may or may not end a team's mythical national championship hopes. Money, as always, talks.

And the money is in regular-season games, conference championship games, and bowl trips. Those opportunities are far more inclusive than any playoff ladder, no matter how many teams get in. One hundred and nineteen D-I football programs; sixteen, eight, or four playoff teams. Which concept wins?

Be careful what you wish for. And enjoy your weekend in Atlanta, or Tampa, or somewhere. As long as you continue to relish those experiences, a playoff moves farther and farther away.

On The Way To Tally

2008-11-28T11:26:00.002-05:00

I'm eating lunch right now at a Fox Sports Grill in the Charlotte airport. No, I do not get a discount.

On my way to Tallahassee for the epic UF-FSU confab. Stand by for details.

Also ahead: why it's your fault that there's no playoff in major college football. Really.

Road Diaries Revisited: Dallas

2008-11-15T03:52:00.000-05:00

In the NBA, there are wins, and there are good wins.

Friday night was a good win for the Orlando Magic.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- the Mavs had not won a home game this season, and their record was 2-6. Plus, they blew a 19-point first quarter lead in Chicago the night before, reinforcing a season-long pattern of fading in the second half. According to the standings, the Mavericks are not very good. According to their own standards, they're horrible.

Doesn't matter. This was a good win.

It was a good win not just because it was the first time the Magic ever won in American Airlines Center, and not just because it snapped a ten-year Magic losing streak in Dallas. It was a good win because it gave head coach Stan Van Gundy some valuable ammunition to use for the rest of this season:

It proved that, as long as you keep competing, good things can happen. Or, as Magic Director of Communications George Galante put it succinctly in the hallway outside the locker room: "The difference was that we kept playing, and they didn't." Coaches say that kind of stuff every night, but now Stan has the DVD to prove it.

Orlando won that game on Friday night despite an atrocious first quarter and a complete inability to stop the Mavs from scoring in the paint. Dwight had his double-double, but it was relatively quiet. Jameer got red-hot in the second half, and Pietrus made some incredibly clutch plays in the final minutes. But for the most part, it was a dog of a game until those frantic exchanges in the fourth quarter, when the Magic capped a 15-point comeback to seal the deal.

The Dallas press has been all over the Mavericks as a team that cannot finish, and from my seat at center court, you could see the Mavs' shoulders drop when the Magic finally tied the game in the 4th. There was a palpable sense of "crap, here we go again" from the players as well as the fans. Now that, by itself, isn't enough to lose you a game. But if the opposition smells blood and starts to apply pressure -- in Friday's case, the Magic applied the screws by crashing the boards like it was the only reason they got on the plane in the first place -- well, you could be toast. And yea, verily, the Mavericks were toasteth.

Stan Van Gundy, who has been uncharacteristically bouncy ever since we got to Dallas, was in a suitably pleasant mood during his postgame comments, as one might imagine. Seeing as how the team had played like crap for the better part of three quarters, I posed my first question thusly: "Stan, if I had to guess, I would think that you liked the outcome but didn't enjoy the process."

To my surprise, he said that he had actually just finished telling his players that he was more proud of them for this win than for any other victory they had this season. Because they never stopped competing, you see. That's the kind of thing that a coach prays will register in his players' minds, ready to be retrieved the next time the chips are down and the boys are up against it. This little era of good feeling continued onto the team plane, where Stan was telling everyone to 'eat up,' like an Italian grandmother at Thanksgiving dinner.

(See, as soon as we step onto the plane, we are confronted with tray after tray of fruit, vegetables, sandwiches, and hot entrees, and everyone kinda picks out a plateful for the flight, and it's like a moving cocktail party without the cocktails, and have I mentioned lately how nice it is to travel with an NBA team?)

The team travels from hotel to arena to airport on two busses, one for the players and coaches and one for everyone else who travels, including broadcasters. I mentioned in a previous entry that Magic GM Otis Smith is on this trip, and for whatever reason, he has chosen to ride on the 'everybody else' bus everywhere we've been. I think it's a nod to his position as general manager; nobody wants to have the school principal looking over their shoulder during a field trip.

Anyway, I was one of the first ones out of the American Airlines Center, and Otis was alone in the back of the Everybody Else Bus. Before we rolled out for Love Field, I walked back there and asked him what's happening to the Mavericks this year. He said that Dallas players are having a hard time adjusting to new head coach Rick Carlisle's defensive principles as well as his offensive sets, of which he apparently has a million. It probably doesn't help that nobody on that roster is known as much of a defender, although they did put in the effort two years ago when they reached the Finals against the Heat.

Of course, that was with Avery Johnson as the head coach. Whom they fired, reportedly because Dirk Nowitzki didn't approve of him, and Dirk has the ear of Mark Cuban. In a related story, Cuban was going absolutely ballistic from his courtside seat over some non-calls in the fourth quarter, especially when Nowitzki had the ball and someone looked at him funny.

Look, it's great that Nowitzki and Cuban have each other's back, and I know Cuban has made a pile of money, and there's a lot about him that I truly admire. And hell, it's his damn team. But every once in a while, you have to wonder how much he's actually holding that franchise back. You'll never see Rich DeVos, Dr. Jerry Buss, or Mickey Arison yelling at a ref from the baseline, and that's probably a good thing.

So now it's on to Charlotte, and if this entry seems to ramble, it's probably because our late-night flight is just a wee bit bumpy and I'm just doing this to take my mind off of things like, oh, wind shear. It feels like we're off-roading in a 100-seat Humvee. This is one of those flights where, if there were kids on this plane, they'd be screaming their heads off right about now.

That said, I'd bet ten bucks that most of the players up front are knocked-out asleep. Damn them.

Nah, they deserve it. This was a good win.

Road Diaries Revisited: Requiem

2008-11-14T00:31:00.005-05:00

Reporting from Dallas, where on Friday the Orlando Magic will play the second of three games on this road trip, all of which I will be covering for Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida.

I posted a previous entry a couple of days ago about the trip to Oklahoma City, and let me add this: while they are a group of novices, the fans in OKC will someday prove to be a powerful home court advantage for the Thunder.

They're new. One of the trivia questions on the video board in-game listed four NBA franchises and asked which one was not in the Western Conference (answer: Chicago Bulls. Yeah, that dumb). However, that newness will wear off someday, and as Stan Van Gundy said in the local paper the next morning, when it does, the fans in Oklahoma City will provide the Thunder with perhaps the best home court advantage in the NBA.

At the beginning of the game, they remain standing until the Thunder score their first points. It's very college, but it's cool, in an innocent kind of way. Even though OKC was throttled by the Magic -- thanks to the best game I have ever seen Dwight Howard play -- the fans remained completely invested. There's something to be said for that.

And it was indeed the best game I've ever seen Dwight play, and I would love to write more about that, and about the subsequent trip to Dallas, where our heroes will face off against the struggling Mavs on Friday.

But I'm consumed by something else, so I will beg for a sidebar.

On Wednesday morning, after the Sun Sports production staff met in the lobby of the team hotel in Oklahoma City, I found myself with a load of free time before I had to hop on the team bus to the Ford Center for the game. I had already worked out in the hotel gym, so that eliminated one of my favorite down-time activities. I was looking at several hours of nothin' in the middle of the Great Plains. Glamorous, I know.

I walked outside of the hotel on a cloudless, chilly, spectacular day in Oklahoma. I have never been there before. It's nice. Quiet, clean, pretty empty downtown. Pretty much what you'd imagine Oklahoma City to look like, if you've never seen it.

Like many of us on the east coast, I had one historical reference to Oklahoma City. It was 1995 -- I was two years out of college -- and I remembered it only vaguely. But I knew it was there, and I knew it was close. So I walked.

Downtown Oklahoma City isn't all that complicated, so it took me all of fifteen minutes to get there. I really didn't intend for this to get melodramatic, but I can't help but say this: something was drawing me there. I was pulled. Sounds hokey, I know, but bear with me.

I made a left turn off one of the main drags, passed an old brick church, and was confronted by a massive granite gate. Behind it was an open area, a grassy park with one huge tree on the right, sidewalks running throughout, and a soft calm across. I speak, of course, of the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is, as I said, a passing memory for me, as I was a first-year employee of the Orlando Magic at the time and far removed from all of it. I cannot explain why I was so drawn to that spot -- I think it had as much to do with the notion that, if I have to travel and be away from my family, I might as well see what there is to see.

That notion, while innocent, trivializes the impact of the Memorial. It is, quite simply, the most powerful place I have ever been.

If you're reading this, do me a favor and click on the link above or Google the memorial and read up on it. Better yet, if you have the means, find a way to visit. You will never view the world in the same way again.

Two aspects of that visit that struck me: one, the chairs. The Memorial features 168 chair statues on a green lawn that represent each of the Americans who lost their lives on April 19, 1995. There are large chairs that represent adults.

There are smaller chairs that represent children.

Second: along the far end of the Memorial property, there's a section of chain-link fence, the only remnant of the temporary barrier that ringed the disaster site after the event. I read in a brochure that as soon as that fence was erected around the property, it was almost immediately filled with tokens of goodwill from empathetic folk around the country. Once the memorial was completed, the designers wisely decided to leave one section of that fence intact, so that the good wishes could flow freely.

On the day I visited, I saw license plates from as far away as Maine and Oregon. I saw stuffed animals. Hats. Postcards. Keychains. Handwritten notes. Photos. Banners. Clothing. Whatever they had. Expressions of love, left there in a place of honor. They remain untouched and unmolested.

In this age of vitriol and venom, of partisan politics and divisiveness, that fence nearly broke me down. If you ever doubt, even for a moment, that in times of crisis, our humanity prevails...well, take a walk down the fence in Oklahoma City.

It is a living reminder of how good we are, even in the face of how awful some of us can be.

I cried a little bit on Wednesday. I'm not afraid to admit it. A few members of the Magic traveling party who have been to Oklahoma City before confided to me that, once they saw the Memorial, they couldn't bring themselves to go back. It's that moving. The park is incredible. Every inch was designed symbolically. It is, again, the most powerful place I have ever been.

Tomorrow, I'll write about basketball again, I promise. I'm in Dallas, and everything is bigger in Texas. We'll have a hell of a game. Forgive me the melodrama, which I didn't want to invoke, but cannot help it.

If you can do it, please go. You'll be better for it.

Road Diaries Revisited: OKC

2008-11-11T23:13:00.004-05:00

Since September 1st, I have hosted 10 episodes of 'Tailgate Overtime,' three live pregame shows on-location in Gainesville and Jacksonville, called the play-by-play for Florida State vs. Miami at Dolphin Stadium, co-hosted 28 (!) live pregame and postgame shows for the Tampa Bay Rays up to and including the World Series, and spent the rest of my time writing and hosting various and sundry episodes of 'Inside The Magic' and 'Under The Lights.' What I have not done, yet, is perform pregame and sideline duties for a Magic game.

Which is about to change, seeing as how I'm writing this at an altitude of 38,000 feet, on the team plane.

Actually, it's not the 'team plane' anymore. As we wing our way to Oklahoma City for a three-game, five-day roadie, we do so on a chartered Northwest Airlines A319 VIP. The 'VIP' in the title is no accident -- this is an aircraft specifically outfitted for charter travel. Every seat on the plane is first-class sized and lined in leather; entertainment options include personal DVD players for each passenger, and a library of movies from which to choose. This is the first year that the Magic have used this service.

For the better part of 15 years, the Orlando Magic traveled on their own personalized 737, a handsome craft painted the correct shade of blue and dubbed 'Magic Carpet Aviation.' She rested on a gleaming white floor in her own custom-built hangar on the Tradeport side of Orlando International Airport. As one might imagine, her upkeep was pricey, especially when one factors in the staff, which included pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics, all working full-time. At some point, the bottom line became the bottom line; the rumor is that the team will save $5 million per year by chartering instead of owning. And that figure was before they sold the 737, which apparently was snapped up quickly (in fact, I was told that the mere rumor of a sale drew inquiries from interested parties). I suppose that an airplane as lovingly maintained and sheltered as the Magic Carpet craft would be a hot commodity for those in the market for such things.

For now, the Magic have held onto the hangar itself, which has become a very expensive parking garage for the players' very expensive cars. Because this is a charter service, however, there is now a security element before we climb the stairs onto the plane, which presents the fascinating dynamic of watching Rashard Lewis fishing into his wallet for a driver's license. Once the traveling party has been checked, it's simply a matter of walking 100 yards across a tarmac and up the stairs. As I have written in this space before, it's the only way to travel.

So anyway, we're on Northwest, and it's a much better deal for the broadcasters. In the old plane, we were crammed into two parallel benches at the rear of the cabin. Now, while we still occupy the last third of the aircraft, we do so in comfortable seats. Interestingly, the plane is divvied up precisely as the old plane was: players in the forward section, coaches amidships, everybody else in the back. On this plane, just as in the old one, the coaches sit across from each other at card tables, where they can work their laptops and talk strategy. Or sleep, as a couple of them are doing at the moment.

Today, the manifest also includes Magic general manager Otis Smith, who travels as frequently as any GM in the league. He's made a point of being on the road as much as possible ever since he was elevated to his current position; I get the sense that he wants to feel the vibe of the team by watching them during their down time. I'm sure it doesn't hurt his standing with the players for them to see him, too.

One note about the charter: remember back in the olden days, when airlines actually served hot food, with silverware, while in transit? They still do that here. Tonight it was chicken marsala or beef stew. At last check, chicken was winning in a landslide.

This trip features two new destinations for me, Oklahoma City and Charlotte. The middle stop is Dallas, which, coincidentally, was one of the infrequent road trips I made with the team in years past. Nice hotel there, as I recall, and a damn good hamburger down the street. Early scouting reports on Oklahoma City from David Steele and Joey Colon included the words "clean" and "absolutely nothing to do." Joey, the Spanish radio voice of the Magic, deserves kudos for a transformation since I saw him last; the man has dropped 52 pounds and is rightfully proud of it. I note that he ate the chicken dry, without pasta or sauce. Well played, sir.

The Thunder on Wednesday night, followed by the Mavericks, then the Bobcats. Two wins in three games would be expected; three in a row wouldn't be impossible. I seem to recall that the Magic lost a tough one in Big D the last time I was there. Perhaps I will not be a bad-luck charm this time around.

Oh, yeah, and one more thing: Dwight Howard, the face of the franchise and the most dynamic center in the league today, made the entire flight from Orlando to Oklahoma City dressed as Sho'nuff, the 'Shogun of Harlem,' from the 1985 film 'The Last Dragon.' Seriously. It was a really good costume, too. Fright wig, bright red kimono, the whole nine yards. I wish I was making this up. Clearly, there is a story behind this...perhaps he lost a bet. Then again, he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

Sorry to bury the lead story like that, but...this is the kind of thing that happens on the road. Some investigative journalism is necessary tomorrow, I think.

Tailgate Overtime at 6:30 tonight

2008-11-10T12:53:00.001-05:00

Weekly reminder -- Tailgate Overtime, tonight at 6:30pm on Sun Sports for those watching us in South Florida. Check listings around the rest of the state by going to www.sunsportstv.com.

Numbers Never Lie

2008-11-03T15:36:00.003-05:00

So Alabama and Texas Tech are the two best college football teams in America right now?

I'll take "Things I Don't Believe" for a thousand, Alex.

Texas Tech has the number one passing offense in the country and the 70th-best rushing offense, the average of which works out to #2 in total offense and #3 in scoring offense. Fine.

They're also 54th in the nation in total defense, which actually places them at the head of the class in the Big 12. And with a conference filled with explosive offenses -- Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas are all in the top 10 nationally -- I'm willing to grant them some leniency. You have to play the teams in your conference, and Texas Tech has defended them better than anyone else in the Big 12. Okay.

The win against Texas this week was awesome. However, two of the Red Raiders' wins this season were against I-AA opponents (Eastern Washington and UMass, who combined to score 38 against them, by the way), and three more were against Nevada, SMU, and Kansas State -- a combined record there of 9-17. That's how Texas Tech got to 5-0 to start the season.

From there, they needed overtime to beat a very average Nebraska team. They allowed 25 points to a sub-.500 Texas A&M. That leaves two wins that I would consider convincing: 63 points against Kansas, and the aforementioned thriller against Texas.

No knock on the Red Raiders, but does that resume' merit the #2 slot in the BCS? Put it this way -- would you take Texas Tech over Southern Cal on a neutral field tomorrow?

Alabama, on the other hand, can boast quality wins over Arkansas and Georgia to go along with unnervingly close wins over Kentucky and Ole Miss, plus pounding on dreck like Clemson, Tennessee, and Arkansas State. The Tide are ranked 61st in total offense (102nd of 119 in passing offense), 18th in rushing, and top-6 in rushing defense, scoring defense, and total defense. They are a 9-0 team predicated on the concept that "if the other guys can't score, they can't win" -- the statistical yin to Texas Tech's yang. Is that the number one team in the nation?

Alabama versus Oklahoma, neutral field, tomorrow. Who wins? What about Alabama - Florida? We'll probably find out on December 6th in Atlanta.

By the way: Florida has allowed only two teams (Ole Miss and LSU) to score more than 10 points against them this season, and they've beaten their last four opponents by an average score of 50-10 -- all in the vaunted SEC, and all since getting beat at home by Ole Miss. Southern Cal has gone on a similar tear since their lone loss to Oregon State: five games, average score of 43-4, three shutouts. I might include Oklahoma into this conversation, but they give up too many points (an average of 31 points allowed per game since their 45-35 loss to Texas on October 11th).

To me, the two teams that are playing the best at this moment are Florida and Southern Cal. However, the team that has the best statistical balance across the board is undoubtably Penn State: 11th or better in every major statistical category except passing offense, where they're still a respectable 39th in the nation and 4th in the Big Ten. I use the NCAA's football database site for just about everything I work on here at Sun Sports, and believe me when I tell you that Penn State's numbers are unique. You rarely see a team that shows up in or near the top 10 nationally in so many diverse categories -- hell, they even lead the nation in kickoff returns.

So my BCS Standings? Penn State at 1, with Florida and Southern Cal at 2a and 2b. Simply put, they're playing the best right this minute. But thanks to Ole Miss and Oregon State, the Gators and Trojans face an uphill battle.

Send 'Em In

2008-11-02T19:06:00.001-05:00

Questions, comments, compliments for Sun Sports or 'Tailgate Overtime' (Monday, 7pm, Sun Sports)? Use the Critique or Reply button below.

In related news: Florida just scored on Georgia again. And then called a time-out.

What Season Is This Again?

2008-10-29T08:12:00.003-05:00

You know what tonight is?

It's Major League Baseball's version of a green-white-checkered finish. Weather permitting, of course.

The last three and a half innings of Game Five of the 2008 World Series are scheduled to begin at 8:30pm tonight on Fox. Fox Sports Florida will present live pregame coverage at 7:30pm -- that's right, an hour of pregame for what will end up being 90 minutes of baseball. You can't get TV like that just anywhere. Weather permitting.

The Rays, as I have written a thousand times already, are the best story in baseball and probably the best sports story of our lifetime, but they're killing me right now. The extended postseason has seriously cut into my college football time as well as my NBA prep. I took part in a fantasy basketball draft on Monday night while at my office watching the beginning of Game Five...I've never been so unprepared. I think I may have drafted both Lopez twins, but I can't be sure. It's all a blur right now.

This is usually my favorite time of year: the beginning of the NBA season, coupled with some smackdown weekends in college football (Florida-Georgia, anyone?). But at the moment, I'm just wiped.

So anyway: if and when the World Series ever starts again, look for live pregame and postgame coverage on Fox Sports Florida. This Saturday, I'll be in Jacksonville with Brady Ackerman for a live one-hour pregame show on the field before the Game That We're Not Allowed To Call The Cocktail Party Anymore. And next week, Lord willing, I'll be spending three days at an undisclosed location, preferably with spa treatments and fruity drinks with umbrellas.

Weather permitting.

World Series Diary, Game One

2008-10-22T19:46:00.017-05:00

At 8:38pm on October 22nd, 2008, I watched Scott Kazmir throw out the first pitch at the World Series. In St. Petersburg. For the Tampa Bay Rays.

Chew on that for a moment.

Unlike the previous series against Chicago and Boston, the pregame show on Fox Sports Florida was mostly benign. We took the extra step of hiring a security guard to hang with me by the Rotunda entrance at Tropicana Field -- a necessary step after the Division Series and the ALCS. As I many have mentioned before, the drunkenness at these playoff games has approached SEC football levels, but with a much meaner spirit.

It's more of a "NASCAR drunk," or maybe an "Arena Football drunk." "Itchin' for a fight" drunk. "Convinced that hollering the name of the TV host at the top of one's lungs while he's on the air is hysterical" drunk. At the end of the pregame show, I watched a St. Pete cop damn near punch out a rather belligerent Phillies fan who had some choice words for an equally energetic Rays fan. Not good times.

But Game One of the World Series was a bit more manageable from my end. The knowledge that the security guard had my back helped. Also helped that this crowd is a little older and more subdued than the previous crowds -- those World Series tickets are expensive, and hard to get. Different demographic. However, as a whole, I still maintain that these have been the drunkest crowds I have ever personally witnessed, and I've been to tractor pulls, people. Not sure if this is a statement about Rays fans, the Tampa-St. Pete market, neither, or both.

8:45pm: Chase Utley just demolished a Kazmir offering to right. 2-0 Phils. The Philly crowd is much louder than I thought they would be. Also, Kazmir is precisely as shaky as I have long believed him to be. The Rays get out of the inning, then go down quietly in the bottom of the 1st.

8:57pm: Question -- if the uppermost seats at Tropicana Field are obstructed by the catwalk (called the 'D-Ring' here), then why were the rings installed at all? Was that a late addition? Did someone discover that this place was structurally unsound? Now I'm concerned.

9:00pm: Top of the 2nd inning, and bedtime for every child in America under the age of 12. How Major League Baseball manages to draw young fans despite these ridiculously late start times for World Series games is beyond me. Would a day game kill them?

9:04pm: Know what? I like the cowbells. The cowbells can stay.

9:08pm: BJ Upton just hosed Shane Victorino. The Rays center fielder threw out the Flyin' Hawaiian trying to score on a sac fly, and beat him by three feet. I have a new term for this -- he got Upton'd. When a baserunner is lulled to sleep by Upton's laconic body language, then gets picked by a cannon shot from center? Upton'd.

9:13pm: The Cole Hamels kid is good, by the way. Just made Longoria look stupid on a swinging strike three. Got Pena to fly to center, then K'd Aybar. The crowd is officially lulled. Probably just the buzz wearing off.

9:18pm: Raymond, the Rays' mascot? Good dancer, but silly-lookin'. Is that supposed to be a manatee?

9:26pm: Kaz settles down, gets Ryan Howard and Pat Burrell swinging. Still 2-0, heading to bottom of the 3rd. The Phillies have already stranded 3 runners.

9:34pm: Signs of life...Hamels gave up a solid single to Zobrist, then walked Bartlett. Two on, one out, Aki up. They're chanting his name...

9:36pm: And a base hit. They're loaded for Upton. Stand by.

9:39pm: Aaaaaaand a 6-4-3 double play, inning over. Meh.

9:45pm: Two more runners on for the Phils. They've had runners on base in every inning so far. They're out-Raysing the Rays right now.

9:48pm: RBI groundout from Carlos Ruiz. 3-0, top 4th. Kaz gets Rollins swinging, and the inning is over.

9:51pm: The touch tank in center field, filled with real-live rays? Very cool. You can see them flapping around all the way from here, in our auxiliary press box. The tank holds 10,000 gallons of water and is filled with cownose rays that were caught in Tampa Bay. They're cared for by the Florida Aquarium. It's my job to find stuff like this.

9:54pm: Carl Crawford almost splashes the tank with a homer, and it's 3-1. The crowd is still oddly subdued. More cowbell! Fitting that Crawford, who was an All-Star on 100-loss teams prior to this magical year, scores the first run in Tampa Bay Rays World Series history. Man, I cannot believe what I am writing...

10:09pm: Carlos Pena makes a rare error at first, allowing Pat Burrell to reach on a squib grounder. It's worth noting that the Rays, one of the best defensive teams in the American League, have committed some key errors in the postseason games that they lost -- I'm thinking of Bartlett and Longoria, specifically. As it stands, the Rays will get out of this inning, but it's cause for concern.

10:15pm: I just looked up at the scoreboard and saw that the Phillies have 5 hits, and the Rays have 4. It feels like the Phils should have about 12, and the Rays maybe two. That's the vibe in this game.

10:25pm: And a bit of a jump in the 5th, as Aki Iwamura doubles home a run to make it 3-2. This crowd is begging for an excuse to get crazy. It's just not the same vibe as the White Sox series or the Red Sox series...I'm starting to believe the "corporate crowd" theory. Feels like 40,000 sponsors, sponsors' families, and sponsors' families' neighbors in here. By the way, it's 10:29 now, and the top of the 6th. But baseball is all about the kids! (Mine went to bed two hours ago.)

10:40pm: Todd Kalas just made his way down to my row. I happened to find a bank of unoccupied seats up against the railing here in the upper deck...a good find. Seating is at a premium here, more so than parking. We can do parking in Florida, friends. We're professionals. Seating, not so much. Is there still a game going on?

10:50pm: The "baserunner in every inning" trend continues as new Rays pitcher JP Howell allows a single to Chase Utley in the top of the 7th. Seventh hit for the Philies, feels like the 428th. Then Utley steals second. Good news: Kazmir and Howell should have their stretch move pretty much perfected by now.

10:53pm: Wild pitch from Howell allows Utley to move to third. The Phils have stranded 7 runners tonight. How much longer can the Rays cheat death?

11:00pm: Maybe a bit longer, but Howell won't be the guy to do it. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Grant Balfour! Howell walked a guy, 1st and 3rd, 2 outs.

11:05pm: And they do it again. Balfour gets a strikeout against Shane Victorino (favorite nickname from his Wiki page: "Hawaiian Punch"), and we're onto the 7th inning stretch.

11:09pm: BTW, I have to get up out of this seat in the 9th in order to get down to the clubhouse for postgame interviews. Gotta leave early enough -- it requires a sherpa and a yak to get down there. So I won't be here for the final out. Whatever.

11:19pm: Two outs, top 8th. Balfour is cruising. Gets a fly ball out, and we head to the bottom of the 8th...

(leaves seat to go get interviews in the clubhouse. Rays lose, 3-2.)

(drives back to hotel)

2:01am: Followed Peter Gammons out of the stairwell by the Rays clubhouse, and a fan who was most likely drunk (really?) hollered something about "Hey, Peter, what happened? We came out flat!"

Gammons never broke stride as he muttered under his breath, "no, that's just what happens when you face good pitching." And then he mentioned something about people who know nothing about baseball, but I kinda missed it.

Anyway, he's right about the pitching. The Rays got Hamel'd. This game probably should have been worse, as the Phils stranded 11 runners. Luckily, Tampa Bay has a bullpen, too.

Back at it tomorrow. Or, today. Whatever.

Three Cheers, and Game Seven

2008-10-19T13:01:00.004-05:00

Checking in from a hotel room in Tampa, owing to the fact that the American League Championship Series is going to a Game Seven. I've covered two Game 7's in my professional career -- the '95 NBA Eastern Conference Finals, when the Magic hosted the Pacers, and the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals, when the Lightning hosted Calgary. You've probably heard this a lot lately, but it bears repeating: there is nothing in sports like a Game Seven. Nothing. It's difficult to describe the level of desperation unless you've been there in person.

Of course, THIS Game Seven never should have happened. Up three games to one, seven outs to go, a seven-run lead in Game Five? Why the hell are we here now?

Pitchers missing the strike zone, some shaky defense, excruciatingly patient Boston hitters, and inexperience. That's how.

But I come here not to bury the Rays. Rather, here is your reminder that readers can Reply or Critique this post with ideas or comments for Monday's Tailgate Overtime show (7pm, Sun Sports).

Also, a moment of patting selves on back: the nominees for the 2008 Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards were announced online on Saturday, and Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida was honored with a lucky 13 nominations this year, including nods for "Inside The Rays," "Under The Lights," "Inside The Heat," "Inside The Marlins," and several others. Plus, our partners at the Miami Heat received four additional nominations. A lot of people worked very hard on these submissions, and I'm thrilled to see that work recognized. Bully for us.

Your blogger here was humbled to be nominated four times, both individually in the "On Camera Talent - Sports Talent" category and collectively as part of the team behind "Under The Lights: Stories of Courage," "Inside The Magic: Gameday All-Access," and the Sun Sports production of Game Five of the '07 Magic-Raptors NBA playoff series. I've never been nominated before; I use the word "humbling" in its most literal sense. It feels good, obviously, but also very odd. Nobody works alone in our business -- directors, producers, and editors have much more to do with whether or not I look good than most viewers will ever know. The nominations only make me appreciate that fact even more than I already did. To those I work with, nominated or not: thank you, and thank you again.

And if I win in any of those four categories, I'm gonna mount the statuette on the hood of my car.

See you on TV tonight before and after Game Seven, and Monday night on Tailgate Overtime.

Frank Caliendo Must Have Naked Pictures Of Somebody Important

2008-10-14T21:09:00.003-05:00

Seriously. That's the only explanation.

I write this, of course, while watching the American League Championship Series on TBS, which is promoting Caliendo's new television show with a relentlessness that is equal parts impressive and repulsive. I have no plans to watch it, ever, but you gotta admire the tenacity.

I do so while sitting in my office at roughly 10:15 in the evening on a Tuesday night. This is my fate, until The Freaking Rays lose, which I'm starting to think may not happen until November. Seriously. At the moment, they're destroying the Red Sox for the second straight night, and unless I'm about to witness the greatest comeback in baseball history, Tampa Bay will go to bed with a 3-1 series lead in the ALCS.

(Hey! Another 'Frank TV' promo! What're the odds?)

Man, have you ever seen fans stream out of Fenway Park like that? Our man Todd Kalas opined during our pregame show that it was a 'corporate crowd,' owing to the unwashed masses' remote chances of landing Red Sox playoff tickets. Buncha MLB sponsors and Red Sox advertisers, that's the theory. I like it, and I'm going with it.

These pregame and postgame shows on Fox Sports Florida (have you noticed the new graphics and new look for the network? No? Oh.) have pretty much eaten up my calendar for the last two weeks, thereby preventing me from spending proper time on college football, the NBA, or anything else. I have got to carve out some time.

But here's a few quick hits:

--Raise your hand if you saw Florida's 51-point outburst against LSU coming. Okay, all of you with your hands raised? You're lying.

I was on the field for the first quarter of that game in Gainesville, and the noise level at the Swamp was the most intense I've ever heard it. One interesting note: much like Sun Sports with the Gators and Seminoles, LSU football is broadcast on replay by a regional sports network that serves Louisiana. Prior to the game, as the fans were getting fully amped, the LSU network's TV director made a comment to one of our Sun Sports crew members that he "didn't feel very good about this one." And this was before the game, when LSU was still the 3rd-ranked team in the country. Wonder what he knew.

--The Miami-UCF game accomplished two things: one, it set the concept of "offense" back about twenty years. And two, it confirmed that UCF is officially in trouble.

--The one team in Florida that wanted an off-week the least? Florida State. As sharp as that offense looked against Miami back on October 4th, you know that FSU wanted to keep going.

(It's now 13-2, Rays. Willy Aybar has 5 RBI, and Carl Crawford has 5 hits. This is becoming embarrassing.)

--Oh, yeah, and if the drumbeats for Randy Shannon's head really do continue to grow louder, as my friends in South Florida tell me, here's me starting a rumor: Mario Cristobal. Arguably just as competent a recruiter as Shannon, and his deep connection to The U will probably convince him to accept whatever lowball offer Miami makes. And it will be low, mind you. Which is part of the problem. However, I am not calling for Shannon's head, because I think he can turn it around down there if given the time.

Gotta get down to the studio soon...The Freaking Rays and the postgame coverage awaits.

(13-3. Pedroia drove in a run. Sonnanstine finally out of the game. I smell a comeback! Meh.)

Questions, Comments?

2008-10-12T07:56:00.004-05:00

Here's your chance.

E-mail them to me as a Reply or post them as a Critique below. Todd Wright will be the host of tomorrow's Tailgate Overtime show (7pm, Sun Sports), as I'll be helping the Rays announcers with another live pregame show before Game 3 of the American League Championship Series (pregame at 3:30, Fox Sports Florida).

On that note -- received a question from an anonymous viewer as to why he/she couldn't see the live Gator Pregame show we produced prior to Saturday's smackdown of LSU. Answer: that pregame show started at 7pm, head-to-head against our live pregame show for the Tampa Bay Lightning's home opener as well as the Rays pregame show, which began at 7:30pm. If you're scoring at home, that's three live pregame shows airing simultaneously on two networks (Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida).

To make that work, we had to split the signals on each network and make decisions -- some based on contract requirements -- about where in the state we were going to send each show. If you live in the Tampa Bay area, I'm guessing you probably saw the Lightning pregame on one network and the Rays on the other; in South Florida, which is outside of the NHL-mandated Lightning territory, you probably saw the Gator Pregame show. If you go back to the Sun Sports & Fox Sports Florida homepage and click on "Contact," you can get a more detailed response as to why your part of Florida received the programming it did.

Also got a question here about our college football studio programming in general, and the changes that were made for 2008. Short version: "Rec Warehouse College Kickoff," the Friday night show with me, Brady, and Terry that re-aired on Saturday mornings, was not renewed this season. Variety of reasons, a few of which I actually agree with. The postgame shows after Florida and Florida State football games were essentially handed back to the schools, who now produce their coaches' press conferences online at gatorzone.com and seminoles.com. We're producing five live on-location pregame shows (the Florida-LSU game was number three) on Sun Sports, as well as beefing up the Monday night Tailgate Overtime show. That's the studio lineup for college football, which does not include the national games we can air live from FSN or any of the coaches' shows or 'third-party' shows that we air on both networks; check listings, as they say.

Hope that helps. Be nice to Todd and the boys on Monday. If you like, come watch me navigate the Rays pregame show at 3:30pm. See you on TV.

Rays. Red Sox. Game One.

2008-10-10T20:59:00.005-05:00

The Tampa Bay Rays are playing in the American League Championship Series.

There, I wrote it, and it looks precisely as preposterous as I imagined.

Within the last week, I've begun ramping up for the NBA season by checking in at a Magic preseason game, and spent a rainy Saturday calling the play-by-play for the FSU-Miami football game. But the story that I simply cannot escape is the freaking Rays.

In fact, I think I might have to call them that. The Freaking Rays.

I write this from the left field auxiliary press box at Tropicana Field during Game One of the ALCS against the mighty Boston Red Sox. The cowbells, which have become a trademark of the Rays' playoff infancy, are at full blast. Unlike the Divisional Series against the White Sox, this game has a noticeable visiting team presence (no shocker there, if you've ever attended a Rays-Red Sox regular season game at the Trop). But while the red shirts are visible, they're not enough to drown out those bloody cowbells, nor can they stifle the Rays fans, who are treating every pitch like 4th & inches.

This is my third Rays playoff game. Fox Sports Florida has produced a one-hour live pregame show for each postseason game at the Trop; my role has been to stand for live shots at the Rotunda entrance, where the majority of the single-game ticket holders enter. I deserve combat pay.

Seriously -- what is it about a camera and lights that turns ordinary baseball fans into complete idiots? I've been cowbelled, hollered at, bumped while on-camera. Nine times out of ten, I can smell the booze on their breath. There are a few friendlies out there -- many thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello, or compliment our coverage, or say how much they love the Chevy Florida Fishing Report (happens all the time, people. All. The. Time.) A few people wanted to shake my hand and say hello. Fine.

But the rest of you? When you wake up tomorrow with a pounding headache, please ask yourself if it's totally necessary to get blitzed before walking into a ballpark. I know the beer in here is expensive, but honestly. And another note -- if you want to get yourself or your sign on TV, it helps to do it when the camera is actually turned on. Or when the camera is attached to the tripod. I lost count of the number of people who walked up and hollered at a bright light and no camera.

Anyway, The Freaking Rays. I've been on a number of radio shows this week in Tampa and Orlando, and I'm out of superlatives. They might lose this series to Boston -- which would make Mrs. Red Sox Nation happy -- but they've already gone so far beyond anything we could reasonably expect, I'm not sure what to hope for anymore.

After visiting the home locker room after the first two games of the White Sox series, I was inclined to believe that this team wasn't going to lose. They dropped the first game in Chicago, of course, but came back to close it without a return trip to this bizarre pit they call home. Actually, Joe Maddon calls it "The Pit," which might be appropriate. Now, they're up against the closest thing to a dynasty that Major League Baseball can currently claim, and...I don't know.

Can The Freaking Rays go to the World Series?

Couple of notes: Tim Kurkjian is sitting two seats away from me, right next to Peter Gammons. Good to know that ESPN's star baseball reporters don't get seats any better than mine. Tim said hello when he walked in, which was a minor surprise, as it's been over five years since I worked with him in Bristol.

I asked him if he could believe this. "I have no idea how they're doing it," was his reply. "I picked them to finish fourth."

Also ran into former Magic play-by-play announcer and current TBS talent Chip Caray, who is working this series. He still lives in Orlando, and I see his family around town every so often. He's ready for this to be over. Baseball is a long season, no matter how entertaining The Freaking Rays might be.

The media crush for this series is easily 50 percent bigger than it was for the White Sox. These are the Red Sox, after all, and this is the Championship Series. The Rays PR staff, bless their hearts, are doing everything they can do to keep up with the demand. It's borderline overwhelming.

Oh, yeah -- I have to drive to Gainesville in the morning for our live Gator Pregame show, as UF faces LSU in a night game at the Swamp. So you've got that, plus another Fox Sports Florida pregame for the Rays, plus opening night for the Tampa Bay Lightning, all happening simultaneously on Saturday. Our two networks are being split and split again to divy up those three live pregame shows around the state, so check your local listings, as they say.

Next week, when the series moves to Boston, I'll host pregame and postgame live from our studio with Dewayne Staats and Joe Magrane while Todd Kalas reports live from Fenway. That's Fox Sports Florida in your channel guide.

The Freaking Rays. Shouldn't I be writing about college football right about now?

Post Your Questions For Tailgate Overtime

2008-10-05T10:32:00.003-05:00

Trying something new this week...

If you're reading this and would like to post a question, comment, or topic for discussion for "Tailgate Overtime" (Mondays, 7pm, Sun Sports), please post it here as a Critique or use the Reply function and e-mail it to me. Then, watch the show and you might see your topic on TV.

Items for discussion this week may include:

* The FSU-Miami game (The Dolphin Stadium Downpour), which was the most bizarre collection of trick plays, momentum shifts, and general weirdness that I've seen on the field in a while. A halfback option? Lateral to a tackle? Kicking not one but two muffed punts out of bounds? Freaky game. Also, it was my debut as the play-by-play announcer for Prime Time Noles (Sundays, 7pm, Sun Sports), so feel free to blast my feeble skillz after you watch the replay tonight.

* UCF gets off the schneid, and possibly saves its season, by beating SMU. And a student group that hired an airplane banner to protest the Orlando Sentinel's coverage of UCF's program couldn't spell "Sentinel" correctly. For real.

* Florida wins, but everyone's miserable. And is Tebow hurt or what?

* FIU -- dangerous! And on a winning streak! Is it too early to drop Mario Cristobal's name in the hat as the next head coach at Miami? And can anyone explain to me how the so-called "Big Three" managed to whiff on T.Y. Hilton?

...or whatever else you'd like to hear us talk about. See you on TV.

Live From The Trop

2008-10-02T14:14:00.004-05:00

Wondering if Rays fans were desperate to enjoy a little success in their first-ever postseason game?

In the first inning of today's ALDS opener against the White Sox, the fans at the Trop were cheering called strikes as if each were the final out of the World Series. I watched the first inning, but I couldn't hear it. It's deafening in here. Cowbells are one thing -- this is as throaty a crowd as I can recall at a major league baseball game.

Outside, during our live pregame show on FSN Florida, I was practically assaulted as I tried to do standups near the Rotunda entrance. Not only are they amped, they're shorn -- as in mohawks, the look du jour of today's Rays fan in the know. It's positively electric here.

At least, it was pretty electric when Evan Longoria homered to open scoring...the mood was dampened a tad when the Sox came back to take a third-inning lead. Lot of baseball left...but the atmosphere here is charged.

(pause)

Evan. Longoria.

(long pause)

Back at my usual Tampa hotel, in the high-rent district (cough), and now have some time to digest what I saw tonight.

First: the crowd support tonight was outstanding. I mean, outlandish. Remember back around '02 when Angels fans busted out the Thunderstix? It was that loud. Louder, I think. The Rays fans have a thing about cowbells -- which, if they really stopped and thought about it, is kind of insulting to Tampa Bay as a "cowtown" -- and they ain't skeered to rattle those puppies. That building tonight brought back memories of the loudest, most emotional sports venue I've ever personally witnessed, which happened to be Game 7 of the 1995 NBA Eastern Conference Finals, when the homestanding Orlando Magic beat up on the Indiana Pacers.

It was close. Not quite as loud -- 35,000 fans in a cavernous stadium can't generate the heat of 15,000 in a building half the size -- but it was close.

Second: when I stepped into the Rays locker room tonight to gather interviews for the live postgame show on FSN Florida, I was stunned at the silence.

This was business as usual for these guys. Every player I talked to, from Rocco Baldelli to JP Howell to Carl Crawford to Dan Wheeler to Carlos Pena, all repeated the same mantra: we're sticking to our routine. This is just another day. It's game 163. Blah blah, and blah.

Yet, it's not blah. It's for real. It's how these guys do their thing. I've been fortunate enough to cover the Rays several times this season on FSN Florida, and I've been consistently struck by their supreme sense of confidence. Not cocky, mind you, but confident. They honestly believe they're supposed to be here.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

The Rays, as has been written a thousand times already, have absolutely no business being here, if we judge that statement by their own history. Ten years in baseball, nine years dead last, one year second-to-last. They had the worst record in the majors last year. And they just waxed the White Sox.

That was one of the best baseball games I have ever seen. For a variety of reasons.

And read this: Chicago will be lucky to win one game in this series. Tampa Bay is going to the American League Championship Series, folks. They remind me quite a bit of the 2006 Florida football Gators. They ain't losing. Not this time.

One more thing, relevant to our football audience: after the Rays game, I went to dinner in downtown St. Pete with my cousin Rick, who lives in the area and was lucky enough to score tickets to the game. We ate dinner and watched South Florida's home game against Pitt -- what a night to be a sports fan in the Bay Area! -- and I made a comment in the bar that I wish I had posted here, because you won't believe me now.

With the score tied at 7-7, I said to nobody in particular: "The Bulls are gonna lose this game."

Bingo.

All I'm saying is, I'm on a streak. So set your schedules for the ALCS.

On The Road, Again

2008-09-30T20:20:00.007-05:00

So here's my schedule for the rest of this week:

On Wednesday afternoon, I pick up a rental car in Orlando. This will be explained later.

Thursday morning, I drive to St. Petersburg and assist Todd Kalas, Dewayne Staats, and Joe Magrane with live pregame and postgame coverage of the Tampa Bay Rays' first ever playoff game, against the Chicago White Sox.

I use the phrase "assist" lightly, as these guys have seen every game the Rays have played this year -- hell, they've seen every game the Rays have ever played. My presence is certainly not required, but I'm happy to be there. The Rays, a squad that finished DFL in its division in nine of its ten living seasons, are unquestionably the best story in sports this year. Honestly, don't try to sell me on anything else, because you're wrong.

However, they present a problem.

Because, you see, I am making my 'Prime Time Noles' play-by-play debut this Saturday as Florida State plays, ahem, Miami. These two programs may be down, but it's still one of the best rivalries in the game...and the timing sucks.

Let me explain.

Paul Kennedy has been calling the play-by-play for Sun Sports' exclusively produced replays of Florida State football for 20 years. However, he's also our host for Tampa Bay Lightning hockey, and the 'Ning happen to be playing on Saturday. In Prague. Good seats still available.

No, he's not going there, but he IS coming to our studio to host pregame and intermission reports for the game, and generally be a failsafe in case the satellite feed from the Czech Republic is interrupted, which is unlikely, but certainly wouldn't be shocking.

So anyway, he's out for the FSU-Miami game.

Normally, Tom Block would step in for Paul, but he and his wife just had a baby (and Mazel Tov to them). Tom, being a smart guy, foresaw the fact that his wife would be due right about now, so he asked for the weekend off. Which left me.

Since I was going to be in Miami anyway for a previously scheduled pregame show, I simply move into the play-by-play booth. Perfect. Except...the Rays.

Game 1 is Thursday, Game 2 is Friday. So the schedule now reads: drive said rental car to St. Pete on Thursday morning. Assist the professionals with their pregame show (on FSN Florida, ask your cable or satellite provider) from 1:30pm until first pitch. Stay and watch the Rays play their first playoff game ever.

/wrapping hair over ears, whispering "excellent"

Assist the professionals with the postgame show (again, on FSN Florida, and I *really* think you need to call your cable or satellite provider). Drive to hotel and check in.

Friday, same drill. Wake up, work out.

No, seriously. I really do that on the road. Minimum 30 minutes a day on the treadmill, or I'll pop a power yoga DVD into my laptop. Swear. If I didn't do that, I would go nuts.

Anyway, 5pm pregame show on FSN Florida, 6pm first pitch, stay and watch the game, do some interviews on postgame show (on FSN Florida!). Go to hotel. Sleep.

Saturday morning, wake up and drive rental car (aha!) to Tampa airport. Take 55-minute flight to Fort Lauderdale. Pick up another rental car. Drive to hotel, pick up Keith Jones, Barry Milligan, and whoever else needs a ride to Dolphin Stadium. Drive to the park and do the play-by-play for Florida State and freaking Miami.

Feel sorry for me? I know you don't. But I'm losing track of rental car reservations already. And I have a LOT of work to do to get ready for a college football game this weekend...more than you can imagine.

Stay tuned. More to come.

New Magic Uniforms Announced

2008-09-24T15:19:00.003-05:00

Analysis? They never should have dumped the pinstripes in the first place.

What Have We Learned?

2008-09-21T19:11:00.025-05:00

What have we learned this weekend?

On a personal note, I have learned that I need to throw caution to the wind more often, and just write whatever the hell pops into my mind. I say that because I never doubted, not once, that the United States squad would win the Ryder Cup, Tiger or no Tiger. And I realize that writing that now, after the fact, is as useful as you-know-whats on a boar, so you'll just have to trust me.

ESPN.com's Bill Simmons has advanced the "Ewing Theory" -- team loses superduperstar, team succeeds as a result of reduced pressure and tension -- so I will forgo the psychobabble about why this year's US Ryder Cup squad gained from Tiger's absence. But it was there, perceptible throughout the weekend. Did you see the look on Phil Mickelson's face when interviewed late Sunday afternoon?

Total relief, fueled by a lack of anxiety. Tiger, through no fault of his own, completely intimidates his American counterparts during the Ryder Cup. And as hard as he may try to be "one of the guys," it never works. He's just too, umm, Tiger. Dorky in a kind of best-player-that-ever-lived sorta way. Like Wayne Gretzky.

However, when the star is absent, nobody expects the backup singers to actually win...and that liberates them just enough to go out there and kick some Euro tush.

With Tiger rehabbing his surgically repaired wheel and absent at this year's Cup, the mere mortals on the PGA Tour were free to be who they are: a relentlessly talented, gutsy, in-your-face bunch. I would have bet the farm on a United States victory. In fact, I wish I did.

Not only did the United States bring the Ryder Cup back to these shores for the first time since the controversial '99 win at Brookline, they also served to identify the one player who might actually have both the game and the gumption to challenge the aforementioned T. Woods for the next decade. If you take nothing else from the 2008 Ryder Cup, remember the name of Anthony Kim as the player who is going to make the non-Tiger golf world interesting from now until whenever. Considering Sergio Garcia's record at this event, it's tough to overstate how big Kim's win over Garcia in Sunday singles really was. App State over Michigan in 2007 doesn't quite capture it; this was more like Brett Favre quarterbacking Southern Miss to a win over Florida State in 1989. In both cases, we're talking about the dawn of a new era.

When all is said and done (and when is that, really?), Anthony Kim will finish his professional career with more wins in majors than Phil Mickelson. Go ahead, write it down. Remember, I'm the guy who coined the phrase "Big Five."

What else did we learn this weekend?

In college football, we learned that Tennessee is horrible. Which means, by extension, that we really have no idea how good Florida might be. The Gator offense has certainly scored plenty of points, but they've yet to truly exploit the talents of players like Chris Rainey, Jeff Demps, or the still-recovering Percy Harvin, so I have no idea what to expect from this team for the rest of the season.

So far this year, Florida has blown out an overmatched Hawaii team at home; played a desultory first half against Miami (again, at home) before the athletes took over the game in the second half; and now watched as Tennessee lit itself on fire in Knoxville with ineptitude in the goal-line offense, fumbles, interceptions, and stupid penalties. None of which tells us anything about Florida's offense, really.

Consider this: Florida has scored 14 touchdowns this season, which is four fewer than South Florida and two less than Florida State. Yet, of those 14 Gator TD's, two were pick-6 interceptions by Ahmad Black and Major Wright, and two came on Brandon James punt returns. That means that the vaunted UF offense has scored ten times in three games against opponents with a combined record of 4-5. Will that beat Georgia?

While we (Christian) Ponder that question, here's another: how much further can the Florida State offense plunge?

A 12-3 loss to make it three in a row for the Demon Deacons over the Seminoles is embarrassing enough; but after so many signs of hope in their first two games, and coming off back-to-back 7-6 seasons, this particular loss is crushing.

Seven turnovers, with five interceptions. 118 passing yards. 102 rushing yards, with 46 of that coming from the backup quarterback. Not only did the offense fail to reach its own mediocre standards of last season, it appears they've gotten worse.

Of course, throw this in, too -- Wake Forest is better than you think, and certainly light years ahead of the two I-AA opponents that opened Florida State's schedule. Still, not much solace. You want to know the biggest difference between FSU and Wake right now? The Wake kids, while arguably not as talented as Florida State, always go where they are supposed to go. They rarely miss an assignment. Can we say the same about the Seminoles? And what does that point to?

If college football were an investment -- and the way things are going right now, it's as good as any -- I would seriously consider placing some long-term funds in Miami. That win over Texas A&M (an admittedly down program, but still a roadie in a traditionally hostile environment) was huge for the confidence of the young Hurricanes, and proved Randy Shannon to be prophetic: the loss to Florida did, indeed, help his team more than anyone would know.

Miami didn't just beat the Aggies, they smoked 'em. Speed on both sides of the ball, a poised and confident Robert Marve, a running game that racked up nearly 6 yards per carry. They're young, they're callow, but they're so bloody talented...the challenge is on the coaching staff to keep their heads in it for an entire season. And didn't that October 4 matchup with Florida State just get that much more interesting?

And one more thing we learned this weekend -- the Rays are for real, as predicted. We'll save that one for another time.

Pairing Off At The Ryder Cup

2008-09-17T12:31:00.003-05:00

Aaah, the wonder of live television.

Sitting in the office on a Wednesday afternoon, getting ready for Thursday night's Chevy Florida Fishing Report and trying to figure out my next round of golf, I flipped on the Golf Channel's live coverage of the Ryder Cup press conferences in Louisville.

As it happened, European captain Nick Faldo was on the dais, receiving a grilling from the notoriously aggressive Euro-media. The topic was Faldo's pairings for the opening day of the Ryder Cup, information that historically has been guarded by team captains as closely as US presidents have guarded the Book of Secrets.

"I've found it...he's playing Westwood with Stenson!"

As silly as it may sound to anyone who doesn't play golf or follow the Ryder Cup, these pairings are kind of a big deal. The pairings are blind, meaning that the opposing team isn't supposed to know the order or combination of your players until shortly before the day's matches begin. The trick for a captain is to anticipate what the other side might do, and attempt to stack his team accordingly -- while also paying attention to the desires and personalities of his own team (see the disastrous Woods-Mickelson pairing at the '04 Cup).

Anyway, one of the European television networks apparently got a clean camera shot of Faldo's Friday pairings, which were allegedly written in his own large hand on a piece of paper he was carrying around at Valhalla. I say "allegedly" because, even though the media gathered in Kentucky made repeated references to this camera shot, I couldn't find anything about it online as of this writing. But they were insistent.

Faldo, who has reinvented himself as an affable television personality since leaving the game, seemed to revert to his mid-1990's churlish persona when pressed about these pairings. At various points during the press conference, he claimed that the piece of paper in question was:

1. A pairings sheet for Thursday's practice round
2. A randomly organized roster, simply for his own reference
3. A list of lunch orders for his squad
4. His NFL picks for this weekend

Okay, maybe not the last one, but...he looked bad. Real bad. Best I could tell, he was caught red-handed, flashing his presumptive Friday pairings within camera range, a Ryder Cup captain rookie mistake if ever there was one. And when pressed on the matter -- one European reporter claimed that not only had everyone in the press room seen it, but it was now being beamed back home -- Faldo went into a smiling, sarcastic, bite-me routine without ever giving a straight answer.

Faldo, for those who don't follow the game, was known overseas as combative with the media during his playing days. The Golf Channel panel, particularly the exceptional golf writer John Hawkins, speculated that the Euro press may have seized on this gaffe as a chance to stick it right back to him. If the goal was to make him sweat, it worked.

All of which begs the question -- who cares? If that was indeed his Friday pairing sheet, what would it matter?

Well...imagine if you were a Major League Baseball manager and knew, in advance, the precise pitching lineup you would face that night. You knew you would see Kazmir for 6 innings, Bradford in the 7th, Wheeler in the 8th, and Percival to close. Would that information be useful to you? Could you not plan your offensive lineup accordingly?

It's akin to stealing the playbook, or knowing who's coming off the DL right before the game. That's why the pairings matter. That said, there was a solution for Faldo, one that apparently never occurred to him.

It's Wednesday. The event starts Friday. Nothing is set in stone until they hit the course that morning. Faldo could have easily blown this off by saying, "Yes, it was a pairings sheet -- one of about six that I had in my pocket. I've written down a half-dozen different possibilities for Friday, and the camera caught me looking at one of them. That might be the one I use. And it might not."

Done.

Instead, he deflected, denied, obfuscated, smart-assed, and treated the questioners like dirt -- which will do absolutely nothing to get them off his back, and places even more stress on an assignment that's already akin to a month's worth of wearing underwear that's four sizes too small. He had a great chance to throw one more psychological wrench at the Tiger-less US squad...and blew it.

Granted, it's easy to sit here and think that clearly, as I'm not the one facing the klieg lights and the microphones. But ask yourself this: would Paul Azinger make that mistake? And would he then compound it by tap-dancing on the podium? Not in a million years.

Of course, there's also the possibility that Faldo was pulling a dummy on the European tabloid press, sporting a fake pairings sheet precisely for the purpose of throwing off the Americans and/or sticking it to the media. Possible, but not likely.

From here, it looked like a rookie mistake.

Raising 'Canes

2008-09-11T14:43:00.003-05:00

I've made three different radio appearances in the last seven days: one in Orlando with Brady Ackerman and Jerry O'Neill and two in Tampa with the Killer B's (midday) and Scot Brantley (afternoons, with the Fabulous Sports Babe, who still hasn't lost her fastball. Anyone else remember how the afternoon TV simulcast of her national radio show pretty much kept ESPN2 afloat during the early days? The Babe and Jim Rome built that network. Honestly, they should both be honored with bronze statues on the Bristol campus. You better recognize. I'm digressing).

Anyway, during all three shows, the question of Miami came up. Not just the Randy Shannon handshake thing (not the best way to express himself, but who cares) or the Meyer-running-up-the-score thing (get serious), but the Hurricanes in general. So here's what I told them all:

If Miami plays as hard every week as they did against Florida last Saturday, these 'Canes will contend for the ACC title this year. Not next year, not two years from now (when the 22 true freshmen who played in their opener become juniors) -- this year.

The ACC is down, of course, which makes that statement far less fearless than it looks. Consider the following, just from the first two weeks of the season:

--NC State got bageled by South Carolina
--Virginia was destroyed by Southern Cal (no shame in losing to the Trojans, but 52-7? And you're a member of a BCS conference?)
--Virginia Tech was beaten by then-unranked East Carolina (again, less shame now than it was then, as the Pirates appear to be for real, but still...East Carolina? Frank Beamer used to put East Carolinas on his cereal in the morning.)
--Maryland was lucky to beat Delaware
--Clemson got crushed by Alabama (on national television, no less)
--North Carolina had to score 14 points in the 4th quarter to beat McNeese State (!)
--Maryland lost to Middle Tennessee State

...and Miami added to the conference's early-season woes with a 23-point loss to a vicious rival in the Florida Gators.

We know nothing of Florida State yet; their opener against Western Carolina was impressive in that they handled their business against a clearly overmatched team, but that's all we can take from it. I don't expect to learn very much from Chattanooga this week, either. Their first test comes September 20th against Wake Forest, one of the few ACC teams that has looked halfway decent over the first two weeks (although that barnburner against Ole Miss makes me wonder). Hell, for all we know, Florida State might be the class of the conference this year.

But the topic was Miami, and not only have I seen them play in person this year, I've seen them play in person the last couple of years -- not at Miami, but in high school, where more than a dozen current Hurricanes played in FHSAA State Championship games televised by Sun Sports and/or FSN Florida. Robert Marve, Jacory Harris, Sean Spence, Marcus Forston, Leonard Hankerson, Brandon Harris, Kendal Thompkins -- the list goes on. And what's impressive to me about Miami is the fact that all of these athletes are going just as hard as they did in high school.

What I mean is, it's pretty clear from watching the Hurricanes in person that they believe in themselves. Despite a Swamp-record crowd of over 91,000, the 'Canes didn't get flustered -- they just got beat, by a better, more experienced team. Florida's execution in the second half was a result of being there before; they weren't necessarily faster, or more talented, than Miami. They were just wiser.

Which brings us back to the Atlantic Coast Conference. With so many programs in flux this year, Miami's talent could be enough to carry them in their division. The key question is coaching -- not just from Randy Shannon, but from Patrick Nix and the rest of the offensive staff. Miami's biggest weakness against Florida was an inability to execute offensively, and a lack of adjustment when it became apparent that the Gators' defense was especially salty on that night. They've got to learn how to toss the game plan out the window when it's obviously not working, something that comes with, well, experience (on the part of the coaches as much as the players).

But man, do they play hard. That squad did not embarrass themselves last week. And in a conference that has looked pretty embarrassing so far, that might be enough.

Road To Hogtown

2008-09-05T19:12:00.003-05:00

Two words: Gainesville Marriott.

Now THIS, my friends, is the glamour of sports television.

I'm here on an overcast evening, watching the (first-place) Rays play Toronto on FSN Florida, as I prepare for Saturday's Hurricane-Gator Pregame on Sun Sports. The room is adequate and smells like gym clothes. There is no kitchenette, not even a fridge. The television sporadically and randomly shows me a Settings menu, which disappears on its own after a few seconds. I've stopped trying to figure it out. Oh, and the ice machine is broken on my floor.

Like I said, glamour. I will not complain, however, because tomorrow night I will see a college football game in person, on a Saturday, for the first time in five years.

This is only possible because the Sun Sports programming lineup has changed this year. After five seasons of live postgame shows after every Florida and Florida State football game, the network shifted its focus to Monday's "Tailgate Overtime" and the presentation of five live, on-location pregame shows at selected games around the state. The first of these is the reason why I'm in Gainesville.

Last week, the opening weekend in college football, I did what everyone else in America has been doing for the last five years -- I sat on my duff and watched football from my living room. It was nice, but odd. My body had become programmed for 12 hours of writing scripts, taking notes on games, and preparing for (at one point in our history) four hours of live programming on every college football Saturday. Over the years, those hours dropped -- we moved "College Kickoff" to Friday night instead of Saturday, and dropped the "Tailgate Saturday Football Wrap" highlight show -- but it was a bear of a day nonetheless.

Now, with the exception of the five weekends of travel, I can watch at home like everyone else. I have mixed emotions about this change of schedule, as I had an emotional attachment to both the Friday "College Kickoff" show as well as the postgames, which were unscripted exercises in information management (something that I happen to relish as an announcer). The reasons for the change in programming are numerous, and I agree with only a couple of them. However, until I get tapped to run a network (shudder), my opinion is only marginally relevant.

So, I'm in Gainesville. Cool.

Five years after I returned home to Orlando to join Sun Sports, my car can now pretty much drive to either Gainesville or Miami by itself. Far and away, those two cities have been my most frequent in-state destinations on the job. I've been to Tallahassee a few times as well, but that's usually a flight. Hogtown and the Magic City are almost always road trips (getting reimbursed for mileage, of course), and they both have become rote memory.

If you've ever made either drive, you'll think I'm nuts when I write this: I think I enjoy the drive to Miami more. It's longer than the Gainesville trip by at least 90 minutes, but for whatever reason, I love passing through the wide chunk of Florida that separates Central and South (understand that I always take the Turnpike, not I-95). It's the headwaters of the Everglades, of course, and the accompanying wide-open spaces. Flatter than flat. Concave, even. Then, civilization gradually creeps up on you in the form of Port St. Lucie, gets fairly obvious in West Palm Beach, becomes unavoidable in Ft. Lauderdale, and then slaps you around in Miami. You have to understand, as an Orlando native, it's a monumental leap for me to admit that I like going to Miami. But I like going to Miami.

Gainesville, on the other hand, is a trip with a totally different vibe. Where the drive to Miami gets more tropical by the minute, the trip north is the direct opposite. It gets hilly and greener and more south-Georgia with every mile. My favorite part: crossing Paynes Prairie. For one, it means I'm five minutes away from my exit, and for another, well, in case it's not obvious, I like a long view.

So anyway, here I am. Out for dinner tonight with my man Mark Wise, then a football tilt tomorrow. Florida will most likely roll the 'Canes, but then again...

I watched Robert Marve play in high school. Jacory Harris, too, as well as all of the Miami Northwestern HS recruits that have signed with Miami. Don't be surprised if the Hurricanes make some kind of a game out of it. For a while, anyway.

No matter what happens, I get to see a football game tomorrow. In person. Not a bad deal.

Live Pregame, Saturday at 7 on Sun Sports

2008-09-02T19:53:00.004-05:00

This programming reminder -- Brady Ackerman and I are live at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville this Saturday night for a one-hour pregame show on Sun Sports leading up to the Florida-Miami game. Cast of thousands, must-see TV. More to come this week.

Extra, Extra

2008-08-27T12:46:00.003-05:00

This just in: the Internet is really, really popular.

Interested but not surprised that Jay Mariotti handed in his resignation from the Chicago Sun-Times after 17 years at the paper. (Okay, maybe a little surprised -- he's walking away from $2 million a year, apparently.)

The rationale delivered by Mariotti sounds logical enough: print journalism is getting creamed by the Internet, and he doesn't want to go down with the ship. Fine. But does anyone believe that he doesn't already have something else in his back pocket? To repeat: $2 million per year. One doesn't walk away from cheese like that, no matter how dismayed one may be about the state of one's industry. He's got to have something else lined up already -- if not, well, he must be awfully confident about his resume'.

Anyway, I'm interested, but not surprised. The newspaper industry is in dire straits these days. Just across the street from Mariotti's old haunt, the rival Chicago Tribune is in a pitched battle for its own survival, as new owner Sam Zell is attempting to sell the Cubs and Wrigley Field in order to raise cash for the heavily-leveraged newspaper operation. Here in Florida, many dailies have already inflicted massive job cuts, including the Palm Beach Post, the Miami Herald, the Tampa Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel, to name but a few. Surely, no matter where you may be as you read this, the same thing is happening in your market as well.

Why?

Saying "it's the economy" or "it's the Internet" is convenient, but what is it that makes the newspaper business so much less viable, and suddenly?

In my view, two words: timeliness and distribution.

Timeliness is obvious. The Internet is quite literally always on. As more and more credible journalistic outlets pour their resources into online news gathering, we will reach a point (if not already) where there is, for all intents and purposes, zero lag time between the event and the reporting of the event. Printed newspapers, by definition, can never compete with that.

Personally, I like reading a hard copy of the newspaper, if only so that I can scan headlines, move from one story to the next quickly, double back and re-read something I skipped. Online newspaper sites don't afford that quick flexibility, particularly if one has a slow connection. However, as the technology improves and the creative catches up with the technical -- I'm still waiting for a major daily newspaper to come up with a one-webpage format that gives readers a method of scanning more than just headlines all at once -- that 'ease of use' concern will fade.

Newspapers are well aware of the immediacy of the Internet, of course, and have been blasting full-speed towards moving the bulk of their resources to their online divisions. Every columnist and reporter in the country is now compelled to blog; every major paper in the country is pushing its website in print. The problem is, they're still a few years behind, and still moving too slowly.

Consider this nugget from the Silicon Alley Insider last summer: as of August 2007, the "total monthly online revenue for the entire public newspaper industry amount[ed] to approximately 15% of Google's monthly US revenue."

Why? Because Google was there first, and had plenty of time to ingrain itself into our minds as the first-choice source of finding information on the Internet. Only when it became apparent to the print industry that no amount of indignation or disbelief could stem the public stampede to the Internet did they (the papers) decide to jump in. Thus, they're so far behind the curve, they can barely see it from here.

Which brings us to distribution. From this laptop, I can read almost any newspaper in the world, instantly. The cost to me is my Internet connection -- which is zero if I'm at work, a manageable monthly bill if I'm at home. Those newspaper websites themselves are maintained via a server -- a large initial investment, but not prohibitive -- and a staff, which can vary in size, but can be "doubled up" with the newspaper's print division as a cost-saving move. There's nothing to stop a print editor from doubling as an online editor, for example.

Point being, when you calculate the total cost of me reading a story online, factoring in my time, my Internet connection, my computer, the newspaper company's server, the staff required, and the like, economies of scale dictate that it comes down to pennies per minute, or per story.

Now -- compare that to reading a story in print. I buy the newspaper: 25 cents, or perhaps $1.25 on Sunday. How much energy was required to run the presses that printed all of those papers? How many employees work the press? How many trucks were required to carry those papers to distribution centers, and how much gas did they use? How much gas did the newspaper carrier use to deliver that paper to my house?

The newspaper model suffers against the Internet model primarily because of distribution (which itself is related to timeliness). Printing and delivering all of those newspapers creates a massive cost; any slippage in sales, advertising, or subscriptions sends the print world over the edge. Which is happening right now.

So how can newspapers keep up, other than layoffs and pushing web traffic?

The answer is out there, but I don't know enough about distribution systems to guess. There's got to be a Long Tail-type solution, something along the lines of Amazon or Rhapsody, but I'm not sure what it is. I do believe, however, that newspapers are not dead.

The model simply has to change. I can't blame Jay Mariotti for deciding to bail instead of waiting for the newspaper industry to figure it out.

Is It Time Yet?

2008-08-24T17:09:00.010-05:00

It's about damn time.

Don't get me wrong -- what Tiger Woods did at the US Open was spectacular TV. The Nadal-Federer final at Wimbledon was the best tennis match I've ever seen. The Tampa Bay Rays, as I've written several times before, are one of the best sports stories (not 'baseball' stories -- sports stories) of the last decade. And Michael Phelps is probably the most dominant Olympian we'll ever see in our lifetimes.

I get it. Blah, blah, and furthermore, blah.

Can we please play some freaking college football already?

I've been getting more "when do you guys come back?" e-mails this summer than ever before, which is a good thing. That means we've achieved traction in our college football coverage. August 25th officially kicks it off with the first episode of "Tailgate Overtime," with the entire cast returning: former UM quarterback Steve Walsh, former Florida State fullback William Floyd, and former UF wideout Chris Doering on the 'player panel,' with the media side once again represented by Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi and national sports radio host Todd Wright.

And me, playing the role of Bus Driver, every Monday night at 7pm.

I've already had a few people ask me about this -- "College Kickoff," the Friday night matchup show featuring Brady Ackerman and Terry Norvelle, will not be back in 2008. Additionally, we will no longer be producing those live one-hour postgame shows after Florida and FSU football games -- but check Gatorzone.com and Seminoles.com, both of which offer extensive streaming audio and video, including postgame press conferences.

Anyone who might be interested in the factors that led to those programming decisions can e-mail me, and I'll put you in touch with someone at Sun Sports & FSN Florida who will not only answer your question, but give you a rundown of all the college football programming that we're offering this season. That said, our goal is to pour all available resources into "Tailgate Overtime" on Monday nights, plus we offer this little carrot: five pregame shows, live and on location around the state, at some of the most intriguing games of the year. Seeing as how we used to do these shows from a studio with satellite "look-ins" at game sites, I'm thrilled to be finally taking our show on the road. Look for me, Brady, and a cast of who-knows-how-many outside the stadium one hour prior to kickoff at the following games:

Miami at Florida, Sept. 6
Florida State at Miami, Oct. 4
LSU at Florida, Oct. 11
Florida - Georgia (Jacksonville), Nov. 1
Florida at Florida State, Nov. 29

Not a bad lineup.

Aside from those five games, here's my preseason watch list for the first month of the college football season, a highly unscientific composite of games that will be worth your time in September:

FAU at Texas, August 30

Never mind the fact that UCF scared the holy crap out of the Longhorns at the Knights' opener in their new stadium last season -- FAU head coach/trailblazer/demigod Howard Schnellenberger raised the bar on this innocuous non-conference opener by opining that Texas "wasn't tough," suggesting that the mighty Borrowing Owls will simply lay multiple hats on whichever unsuspecting five-star wideout Texas rolls out there and subsequently send the 'Horns into the fetal position. Uffta.

While said comments ignited the Texas message boards, Schnelly backed off in subsequent interviews, claiming that he never really, umm, *said* that.

Doesn't matter. It's out there. And now the Owls, who claimed their first ever Sun Belt Conference title and gained an historic bowl win in 2007, are on the hook.

Sidebar: when I forwarded Howard's comments in an e-mail to Sun Sports studio producer Jamie Shapiro (Subject: What The Hell Was He Thinking???), Jamie replied, "he's a genius. This is the same coach who was laughed at in 1979 when he said that Miami was on a collision course with a national championship [a line he's also used at FAU]."

Yeah, but that was MIAMI. This is Florida Atlantic. He can't be right...can he?

USF at UCF, September 6

Everyone knows the drill by now: South Florida doesn't need this game, and doesn't want it. Too much to lose as a BCS-conference program playing a state rival from a non-BCS league, and the Bulls don't consider the Knights to be on their level anyway. The Knights are desperate to prove that they really are the team that won a school-record 10 games en route to a conference title and a bowl berth last season, not the squad that got hammered by South Florida 64-12 last October; the Bulls are desperate to prove that they really are the team that reached the #2 spot in the BCS standings last season, not the team that lost 3 in a row after a 6-0 start and went on to get smoked by Oregon 56-21 in the Sun Bowl.

I've written this before, and said it on the air: this series needs to continue. It's good for college football in Florida, even if the Bulls don't believe it's good for them.

USF at FIU, September 20

This game is interesting not so much for the potential outcome; odds are that the Golden Panthers will get hammered. The question is, by how much? Will FIU bring any home field advantage into this contest? And how does Jim Leavitt feel about playing UCF and FIU -- two non-BCS state rival programs that offer them little return -- on the road, in the same season?

Florida International went 0-11 last season before finally breaking through against North Texas, and head coach Mario Cristobal has been recruiting his guts out ever since he got the gig. FIU won't win this game, but the strides that the program is making under Cristobal -- who could motivate ice to stop melting -- will be apparent when the clock goes all-zeroes.

That's just September, mind you.

We haven't even touched on Florida's chances in the SEC, Miami's stunning youth movement (remember two names: Forston and Spence), or the fact that this could be, maybe, Bobby Bowden's final season at Florida State.

Pace yourselves, people. It's only the beginning.

Fay vs. Rays

2008-08-19T09:52:00.002-05:00

"I'm scared. People will be evacuating and the dumb--- Angels are going there."

So said Torii Hunter, Angels outfielder, prior to this week's three game series at Tampa Bay. I suppose I could have said the same thing, subbing "dumb--- sportscaster," of course.

Tropical Storm Fay was nice enough to allow the Angels and I to arrive in St. Petersburg unharmed on Monday, and as we watch the weather today, it appears that the rest of the series will continue as scheduled. I'm here to fill in as the sideline reporter and host on FSN Florida; the Angels are here to test the Rays' resolve, again.

Playing without Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria, the Rays went 7-3 on their ten-day, three-city road trip. That was one game better than Boston's last ten, which stretched Tampa Bay's lead in the AL East to 4.5 games. The Rays returned to the Bay early Monday morning after their final roadie at Texas. I spoke to the FSN Florida production staff when I arrived on Monday, and most of them didn't get to bed until 5am that morning. How these people maintain this schedule for 162 games is a constant source of wonder for me.

Stepping into Todd Kalas's seat is a unique challenge. While Joe Magrane is in New York calling Olympic baseball for NBC, Todd moves upstairs as a color analyst for a couple of games alongside play-by-play announcer Dewayne Staats. That leaves me to handle the pregame and sideline duties. I welcome these chances to work Rays games -- especially this year -- and would certainly never complain about it, but it's tough to develop a rhythm when you see the team in person only once a month. Having two games this week as opposed to a "one-off" makes a big difference. The prep time for Game 2 is dramatically less than that of Game 1. Simply attending the previous night's game, hearing the locker room talk and weighing the mood at the stadium, makes an enormous difference in my job. Hard to explain, but it goes for anything I do -- NBA, college football, whatever. I'm sure Paul Kennedy feels the same way when he has to step in on the Chevy Florida Fishing Report.

Good game last night, albeit one characterized by mistakes: Vlad Guerrero's defensive brain cramp in right that led to a Rays run, BJ Upton's much-discussed baserunning error, a blown cutoff by the Angels that allowed Justin Ruggiano to score the final run of the game -- after Ruggiano ran through a stop sign at third. Interesting that two teams who pride themselves on doing things 'the right way' -- or 'the Rays way,' according to signs inside the Tampa Bay clubhouse -- had a game decided largely on dumb luck. Baseball, as they say, is a funny game.

The Rays are doing it the right way, of course, something that I have written about extensively in this space before. Monday's crowd was still sparse, but cut them some slack -- there was a freaking hurricane coming, or so we thought.

(On that note -- fantastic column in Monday's Tampa Tribune by Daniel Ruth. Pretty much sums up my view of the weather industry. And yes, it is an industry -- making quasi-educated guesses about that which is mostly unpredictable.)

Two more with the Angels -- weather permitting -- and then into September. Meanwhile, on the TV front, the first episode of 'Tailgate Overtime' on Sun Sports is this coming Monday at 7, with everyone back. Pretty cool that the Rays will be playing meaningful games during college football season for the first time ever.

See you on TV.

Skip Caray, 1939-2008

2008-08-11T12:14:00.004-05:00

As I was on vacation last week and unable to dedicate any amount of time to blogging, a few words on the passing of Skip Caray.

As an Orlando native who grew up in the '70s, my team was the Atlanta Braves. This was pre-Rays, pre-Marlins, pre-anything resembling a professional sports franchise in my home state other than the Dolphins and the Bucs (who joined the NFL when I was five years old). The Braves, as we all know, were catapulted to the rank of 'America's Team' when Ted Turner had this wacky idea to broadcast their games nationwide via satellite -- a concept that Caray himself called "nuts" when Turner proposed it for the '77 season.

Most of us remember great sports announcers in pairs, and I cannot think of Skip Caray without also thinking of Pete Van Wieren. No offense to the inimitable Ernie Johnson Sr., but it was Van Wieren's pleasant tones that stuck in my head. Interestingly enough, the Braves were my first exposure to the concept of the two-man play-by-play booth, wherein two equally competent play-by-play men would split the call by innings, trading seats, as it were, from PXP to analysis and back. That's much, much harder to do than it sounds. In fact, as I recall, Skip, Ernie, and Pete used to switch back and forth from radio to television in those days (again, during the same game), which is completely unheard of now. That, friends, is serious talent.

(Aside: that is also how I got my first live play-by-play experience. When I moved back to Orlando after graduation in 1993, I was introduced to Andrew Monaco, who was the radio play-by-play voice of the Orlando Cubs (Southern League, AA) and a former Magic employee. Andrew invited me into the booth at Tinker Field several times, using me -- a former high school and college baseball player -- as his 'analyst,' mostly because he was bored out of his mind. One night, without any warning, he pulled a Skip 'n Ernie on me, saying into his live microphone: "Cubs lead it 2-0 over the Birmingham Barons here at Tinker Field. Now, with the play-by-play call for the next three innings, here's Whit Watson." And with that, he took off his headset, folded his arms, sat back in his chair, and stared straight out towards the field with a hint of a smile. A simple act that merely changed the course of my career. I've probably never thanked him enough for that.)

One of Andrew's favorite shticks during those long, quiet, sleepy Southern League games was reading the "out-of-town scoreboard" -- in his case, scores from the Japanese League. You had to be there. With a totally straight face, he would update his Orlando audience on the Seibu Lions versus the Tokyo Giants. It was really, really funny. Skip was funny, too, but in a different way -- a scathing, sarcastic, very subtle way.

He had to be funny, too, because the Braves were God-awful back then. My father took me "up to Atlanta" several times to catch Braves' homestands during those summers, and we pretty much had Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to ourselves. Even when they were good -- during the Dale Murphy - Bob Horner - Chris Chambliss years -- they maintained the feel of a local club. Different era and all that.

There are three things that stick with me about watching the Braves during my childhood. The first is the stadium itself, the old "Launching Pad," set in a less-than scenic neighborhood and utterly bland; but it was my first Major League ballpark, and that was enough.

The second thing I remember is my great-aunt Sarah, who lived with my uncle Lou in an historic neighborhood close to downtown Atlanta. Every night for the entire summer, Sarah would pull on her Braves cap, fix herself some dinner, and camp out in the living room to watch her Braves. She spoke to the television as if speaking to her own children, a quirk that cracked me up to no end. We made sure to take Aunt Sarah with us to at least one or two Braves games when we came up for our annual visits; the look on her face when she entered the stadium was not unlike my own. Aunt Sarah is still kicking, by the way, although much of her memory has faded.

The third part of my Braves childhood, of course, was Skip. That nasal delivery was beyond distinctive; it WAS the Braves, at least, as far as I was concerned.

The best Skip Caray call that I can remember is one that has no doubt been mentioned countless times elsewhere -- Francisco Cabrera's pinch-hit RBI single to score Sid Bream and win the 1992 National League Championship Series. I was a senior in college at Cornell, with a final exam the next morning, so I shut myself in my room and listened to the game on the radio, with Skip's call. When Bream came chugging home to deliver the pennant -- on two surgically-repaired knees, no less -- I sprinted down the hallway of my fraternity house to watch the replay on television. I'm pretty sure I was whooping at the time.

Want to know what made Skip unique? His call of that play was terrific, no doubt, but a few moments before Cabrera swung, Skip pretty much predicted it.

"There's a huge gap in left-center field," I remember him saying just before the fateful pitch. "If he hits it there, we can dance in the streets."

That level of attention to detail -- that ability to see the whole field, the whole game -- is what made Skip a special announcer. I think about that call all the time. Honestly. When I do a football game, or a basketball game, I spend as much time and energy watching what's happening away from the ball as I do watching the play. I'd like to think I learned that from Skip Caray's call in 1992. I can tell you with certainty that I listened to that call about a dozen times in my capacity as sports director at Cornell's WVBR-FM, and it never got old.

It's become cliche' to suggest that announcers like Skip are a thing of the past, but I submit the opposite: the team announcers who truly resonate with audiences today are precisely like Skip. Critical when they need to be, supportive when deserved, funny when the game demands some levity. Human. People like us, but with a much better view of the game. They make us feel like we're a part of it, like we matter. Even Skip's most famously caustic late-game remark from those dog days -- "you have our permission to turn off the TV and go walk the dog, as long as you promise to patronize our sponsors" -- is inclusive. He KNEW the game was a stinker, and respected his audience enough to realize that they could see it, too. There are a lot of announcers in our business -- too many, probably -- who believe that they are the reason we watch. They're not.

We're there to see the game, and the announcer is supposed to facilitate. That's what I liked about Skip. He wasn't the show, and he knew it. In fact, he seemed to revel in it. For that, I thank him.

May he rest in peace.

Beantown Gazette

2008-08-06T21:22:00.002-05:00

Wanna know why I love Boston so much?

I mean, aside from fresh seafood, smart people, a stunningly pleasant result from the Big Dig, great neighborhoods, a ton of history, and personality to spare?

It's because you never know who you're going to run into.

Took my son to his first ever Major League Baseball game on Sunday, and it happened to be the Red Sox at Fenway. As we fought our way through the crowds on a sun-splashed Back Bay afternoon, working our way towards our seats along the first base line, we stopped at a food stand for the obligatory Fenway Frank. As I'm waiting in line, I hear someone call my name.

Huh?

It was Scott Anez, the sports director at Orlando's 580 WDBO. Scott is the Magic pregame host on radio, and his wife is from New England. Turns out, he was on vacation, visiting family, taking in a Red Sox game, exactly as I was doing. I would later learn that we were staying at the same hotel. Weird.

Wanna hear something even more weird?

Earlier this summer, I found out that Bill Pidto was leaving ESPN after ten-plus years. My former co-workers sent me an e-mail inviting me to a going-away party, which, sadly, I could not attend, but I taped a farewell message alongside Mark Cassoni, another ESPN refugee, who, like me, worked with Bill in Bristol many years ago.

So anyway, same Red Sox game, a few minutes after I saw Scott, I hear my name called again.

Huh?

Pidto. Sitting four rows behind me and Zach. We chatted for a while -- he was on his way to the Cape for a vacation with his family as they plot their next move. Said hello, he thanked me for the video tribute, and he was off.

The Red Sox won, by the way. Oh, and my son got to drive the boat during our Duck Tour yesterday.

This has been a VERY good week.

Quite An Act

2008-07-29T19:53:00.003-05:00

You know the song "I Write The Songs" by Barry Manilow? He didn't write it.

No, that little ditty was penned by a gentleman from Peoria, Illinois named Benjamin Baldwin. You may know him by his stage name, Bruce Johnston, or you may know his work as a member of the band he joined in 1965 -- the Beach Boys.

Funny, huh?

I bring this up because I've discovered that one of my favorite Internet personalities, Paul "Fitzy" Fitzgerald of the irreverent Townie News, is, well, not the guy who writes the songs.

For those who have never read him or seen the YouTube clips, "Fitzy" is the ultimate Boston sports fan, a Bahstahn-accented pontificator who worships the Red Sox, the Patriots, and anyone else who plays in the Hub, but mostly the Red Sox. The commentaries are usually howlingly funny and never, ever safe for work -- his signature sign-off is "GFY," which will come to you in a minute.

The site has been a guilty pleasure of mine for a long time, and Fitzy's talents have been discovered by the likes of ESPN.com and some of the cable channels. And that's where the mystery started.

A few months ago, I was flipping past VH1 and caught one of those "I Love The..."-type shows, the ones where they interview several hundred marginally recognizable figures from the entertainment industry and edit their snarky comments into packages about pop culture from way back when. While I cannot remember the topic, I do remember seeing "Paul Fitzgerald" -- the graphic on the screen did not refer to him as "Fitzy" -- being interviewed. He was labelled as an "Actor." And his accent had mysteriously disappeared.

So I did some more homework and found his Internet Movie Database (IMDB) page. Lo and behold, he's an actor, alright, with a lengthy resume' that includes soap operas, prime-time dramas, some indie films, and stage work. But here's the part that kills me: he's not from Boston at all.

He's from New York. Born in NYC, raised in Virginia, went to college at Northwestern in Chicago. Nothing even close to Boston. Go watch a few YouTube clips and tell me this guy isn't the greatest actor of our generation.

Honestly, I really believed he was a Bostonian. That accent is pitch-perfect, and the attitude is totally New England. How did he get this gig, and why?

Try as I might, I cannot find a single article about Paul Fitzgerald, Actor, that mentions his work as Fitzy on Townie News. I know it's the same guy -- I've seen enough publicity photos in my life to recognize that it's the same guy. But nowhere -- NOWHERE -- can I find an admission that "Fitzy" is an acting gig.

And since we know that it is, who's paying him? Who's making the money off that Townie News site? How did they find him? I have to know these things.

FWIW, when I say I'm a native Floridian, I mean it. This ain't no act. But I'm fascinated by this Fitzgerald thing. Anybody have any clues?

Knight Fight

2008-07-23T09:38:00.003-05:00

My main man Mike Bianchi treads lightly this week as he addresses UCF head coach George O'Leary's boycott of the Orlando Sentinel.

O'Leary's refusal to speak to the newspaper, which became apparent at the Sun Sports-sponsored FSWA Media Days in Tampa last week and was reinforced at the Conference USA media days that followed, had been casually referenced in the Sentinel before. Now, it's page one of the Sports section. Probably about time.

To review: O'Leary's boycott is a result of what he termed "inaccuracies" in the Sentinel's coverage of the death of UCF football player Ereck Plancher, who passed away following an offseason workout in March. O'Leary says he will not speak to the Sentinel's writers unless and until the paper prints "corrections" to those inaccuracies.

Problem is, O'Leary has yet to spell out what, precisely, the Sentinel got wrong.

Bianchi reports that O'Leary is scheduled to meet with UCF athletic director Keith Tribble to discuss the Sentinel situation, once Tribble returns from vacation in a few days. Until then, here's one guess as to the root of O'Leary's ire:

In its admittedly "aggressive" coverage of this story, the Orlando Sentinel relied heavily on the eyewitness accounts of four anonymous UCF football players who were present at the workout. These players wouldn't speak for the record because, according to the Sentinel, "they feared retribution from UCF coaches."

On the heels of a player's death during an offseason workout, that line looks exceedingly bad. It gives the impression that O'Leary's staff somehow attempted to put a lid on the story, which in turn may imply complicity or guilt. That's the part, I'm betting, that has O'Leary so incensed -- the Sentinel's refusal to accept only the 'official' explanation led to a reliance upon anonymous player sources.

As one who has worked in media for almost 20 years now, I can assure you that 'anonymous sources' are far from perfect. For one thing, we have no way of knowing how accurate the players' recollections of the workout might be. For another, we don't know if they had axes to grind with the UCF staff before this tragedy and allowed those emotions to cloud their perception -- to say nothing of the fact that one of their teammates just died, a fact that might impair one's ability to accurately recall the details of a workout.

But perhaps most relevant for an old-school coach like O'Leary: speaking to a newspaper reporter off the record means that these players went outside the chain of command. They broke ranks. It points to a lack of control, and that's poison to a coach like George O'Leary.

Of course, we're only guessing, because O'Leary hasn't gone public with his Sentinel beefs. And in the big picture, as Scott Maxwell so eloquently points out, a young football player is still dead. That is the truly relevant story here, Scott argues, and I wholeheartedly agree. But in examining only the very small sports angle to this story, it's an interesting glimpse of George O'Leary and the UCF football program.

Programs like Florida, Florida State, and Miami have been through these kinds of PR crises before. Names like Bryan Pata and Devaughn Darling jump to mind; while players like Eraste Autin are perhaps lesser-known, their deaths are no less tragic, no less awful. But while no program ever "gets used" to tragedies like these, some programs are better equipped to deal with them, particularly when it comes to media coverage. If we've learned anything from this rift between O'Leary and the Sentinel, it's that UCF wasn't prepared for this level of scrutiny.

Whether we agree with it or not, this sort of aggressive coverage is the norm among big-time college football programs. South Florida earned the white-hot lights last season when the Bulls reached the 2nd position in the BCS standings; I'm sure that the Bulls' football program had some tough moments while adjusting to that limelight, albeit for reasons on the opposite end of the spectrum from what now confronts O'Leary's staff.

For programs like South Florida and UCF, who have made it their mission to be considered perennial top-25 contenders, the learning curve will be steep. Whether it's the heady rise to the top of the BCS rankings, or the tragic loss of a player during a workout, the coverage is going to be far more 'aggressive' now, no matter what. Perhaps that will be one of many lessons hopefully learned by UCF in the wake of Ereck Plancher's death.

The Oklahoma City...Umm...

2008-07-12T21:53:00.010-05:00

A follow-up to the short piece I wrote on the Summer League in Orlando: the Seattle Slash Oklahoma City franchise is still looking for a nickname.

For those who missed it, the National Basketball Association has finally accepted the fact that the Sonics are moving from Seattle to Oklahoma City. However, in a truly heartening display of sucking up to a fan base that apparently didn't give enough of a crap to prevent the move in the first place, the league has decreed that the name "Sonics" and the green-and-gold color scheme shall belong to Seattle until that city gets another team -- which is to say, forever.

Thus, the team that now moves to Oklahoma City needs a name.

John Rohde, columnist for The Oklahoman, was doubtlessly faced with a tight deadline when he opined that the task of assigning a new name to the former Sonics was an impossible one. He pawned off this challenge by claiming -- weakly -- that every good nickname was somehow politically incorrect.

Hogwash. Be lazy on your own time, Mssr. Rohde. As one who worships great team nicknames, I am only too happy to submit my list of potential team monikers for the good people of Oklahoma City.

Most of the good ones -- and, I predict, the one that will eventually carry the day -- are vaguely Western and/or cowboy-related. In fact, Cowboys isn't a bad name for an NBA squad in Oklahoma City, but it won't make the cut thanks to the proximity of Oklahoma State and the Dallas By-God Cowboys themselves.

However, there are synonyms a-plenty: Wranglers, Desperados, and Gauchos come to mind. There are problems here, though -- the Arena Football League claims Desperados (and they're in Dallas), while the ECHL brings us hockey's Las Vegas Wranglers. Neither is an insurmountable challenge, but if the goal is to reflect Oklahoma's cowboy-ness and show a little originality, you're left with Gauchos, which I happen to like. (UC-Santa Barbara is far enough away from Oklahoma City that nobody should mind.)

I wonder if Outlaws will gain favor. "Oklahoma City Outlaws." Cool. There's some history with that name, albeit kinda lame history: the Oklahoma Outlaws were a USFL (!) expansion team in 1984.

Moving away from the wild wild west, there's been talk of something related to the oil bidness. Barons has been mentioned. Two problems with that: one, I immediately think of the Birmingham Barons, and two, Baron Davis. There's also the Drillers, which is currently in use by a minor-league baseball team in Tulsa with a very cool logo.

You know what's a great oil-related nickname? The Roughnecks. It's not the highest rung on the oil rig totem pole, I'm told, but it's flat-out cool and almost completely unique -- two pro soccer teams in Tulsa have used it, but neither is still around.

"Oklahoma City Roughnecks." We sportscaster types would undoubtably abbreviate them as the 'Necks. I think we're getting warmer.

What the world really, needs, however, is more teams named after animals. Oklahoma's state animal is the Buffalo, or Bison. The state game bird is the Wild Turkey (can you say hard liquor sponsorships? Ka-ching!). The state fish is the Sand Bass. The state reptile is the collared lizard, also known as the mountain boomer. Are we getting anywhere?

Wait, got it: the state bird. Ladies and gentlemen, your Oklahoma City Scissor-Tailed Flycatchers!

Oy.

Actually, going back to the state reptile for a moment...the 'mountain boomer.' Sounds a little like 'Boomer Sooner," which is the University of Oklahoma's fight song. 'Boomer' can also refer to a thunderstorm, of which there are gazillions in Oklahoma, which sits square in the middle of Tornado Alley. It may also make one think of an 'oil boom,' which has much to do with Oklahoma's history.

And here's the best part: 'Boomer' also elicits thoughts of a 'sonic boom,' providing an understated but tangible link back to the franchise's former identity as the Seattle Sonics.

I'll be darned. Maybe we've got it. The Oklahoma City Boomers?

Tell you what -- Boomers, Roughnecks, or Outlaws. I'm good with all three. Remember where you saw it first.

Summertime Fun

2008-07-11T22:02:00.003-05:00

Circumstances conspired to keep me away from the Orlando Pro Summer League more than I had hoped, but here's what I saw, in limited duty.

-- Brook Lopez can play. In his current incarnation, he'll get pushed around a lot by bulkier, more muscular centers and forwards, but once he thickens up, he should be fine. More athletic than I thought, and really good hands. He made a very pretty running one-hander in the lane on Friday that one typically doesn't see from a 7-footer. A few of us in the crowd emitted a collective "whaaaa...?" when he tried a three-pointer, but I won't hold that against him. Also, he wears a perpetual scowl while on the floor, which is a real feat in Summer League play. I'll bet he'll be pretty good.

-- Lawrence Frank looks even younger in shorts and an untucked Polo shirt. As in, he appears to be 14 years old. Really. I cannot stress this enough.

-- Jim O'Brien, on the other hand, has not aged in the last ten years, and that includes the time that we worked together on the set of 'ESPNEWS.'

-- Same for new Bulls head coach Vinny Del Negro. Here's why his hiring was the single biggest surprise (in my book) this NBA off-season: going back, again, to the ESPN days, I was occasionally called upon to host a show called 'NBA Matchup,' which was shot at the NBA Entertainment studios in Secaucus, New Jersey. Vinny was one of the regulars on the show at that time -- this was about seven years ago -- and his travel schedule was unique.

At the time, he lived in Arizona, and played golf every day. I mean, every day. 'Matchup' was shot on Saturdays at 8 or 9 in the morning, and Vinny would fly into Newark the day before, usually after playing 18 that morning. He would plan his return flight to Phoenix -- I am not making this up -- for about noon on Saturday, a very tight turnaround in the world of taped television. He did so in order to guarantee that he could get in 18 more holes on Saturday afternoon, owing to the time change and all. That he would drop this schedule in favor of coaching the Chicago Bulls -- his first NBA head coaching gig, evidenced by the fact that he actually *coached* the Bulls' Summer League team as opposed to handing it off to the 14th assistant -- demonstrates a commitment to this new phase of his career that I find both admirable and stunning, given my understanding of his golf addiction.

Nice, nice guy. I did not get the chance to say hello this week, as he was, well, coaching. Hard. His handicap will suffer.

-- One of the coolest things about watching Summer League play, aside from the close-knit, private atmosphere and the relaxation factor, is determining which players on each Summer League roster are getting serious burn, and which are window dressing.

The draft picks always get minutes. Lopez, Derrick Rose, Michael Beasley, Russell Westbrook, Courtney Lee -- they're gonna play. Everyone knows it. First-rounders are the reason why Summer League exists.

But then you get these otherwise unknowns who end up playing huge minutes before disappearing, presumably forever. You have to think that somebody in each front office is bound and determined to unearth a gem, and has instructed the Summer League coach -- in most cases, like I said, the assistant coach who has designs on moving up the ladder someday, like Patrick Ewing for Orlando -- to work these scrubs into the lineup as much as possible, just to see if they can play or not. Or, more likely, the competitive nature of the coaching staff takes over, and they start playing their most devoted Summer Leaguers in order to get a meaningless (to us) win.

So among those seeing huge minutes this week: Earl Calloway, Josh Davis, Will Conroy, and Nick Lewis.

Ever heard of them? Nope. Will you ever hear of them? Doubt it. But they are exhausted tonight, trust me. Summer League is awesome. The only thing missing was Paul Shirley.

-- Among the celebs in the crowd during just the two days I was in attendance at the RDV Sportsplex: Larry Bird, Pat Riley, Rod Thorn, Kiki Vandeweghe, Otis Smith, Stan Van Gundy, O'Brien, Frank, Del Negro, plus a whole bunch of NBA referees who were there to evaluate the NBDL/NCAA/CFL/God Knows Where They Found Them refs who officiate these train wrecks. Like I said, awesome. It's All-Star Weekend Lite. If you're a basketball junkie, this is a great week.

-- Chris Douglas-Roberts didn't do squat. I know it's Summer League, but he looked disinterested even for this crowd, which is saying something.

-- The World Wide Interweb has picked up on my friends Dante Marchitelli and George Galante, who took their OrlandoMagic.com podcast act into live play-by-play of the Summer League games for a third consecutive year (and on that note, I was one of their original 'guests' on the live Internet broadcast a couple of years ago, way before ESPN Radio and the blogosphere discovered them). Yes, they are funny. Yes, basketball would be a HELL of a lot more entertaining if every game was produced this way. So here's the gauntlet:

This needs to be on television.

I'm throwing it at the feet of my employers at Sun Sports and FSN Florida. People are starved for live basketball this time of year, as the gazillion hits at OrlandoMagic.com proved. It's a relaxed, fun environment, and one of the few properties in sports that hasn't yet been locked up in a long-term TV rights deal. We need to get the Summer League on TV, one way or another.

My plan, which I floated past a few people this week to resounding yawns: set up a literal round table at one corner of the practice court at RDV. Stick me out there with Dante and George, with 'guest appearances' from anyone and everyone -- the Magic announce team of David Steele and Matt Guokas, the Heat announce team of Eric Reid and Tony Fiorentino (who I ran into on Monday), Magic GM Otis Smith, Paul Kennedy, Bird, Riley, anyone who will sit down. Have a big-picture, state-of-the-NBA chat going on with the game in the background. Lots of guests, lots of promos getting people pumped for our NBA coverage still to come this fall, lots of background on players and off-topic chat. Read e-mails. Bring the viewing audience into this unique event, which is not open to the public otherwise. It's play-by-play with a twist. It's fun. It needs to be on television.

Did I mention the 2 million hits at the Magic's website?

I've got the Josh Davis anecdotes ready. Just cue me.

A Match For The Ages

2008-07-06T16:07:00.005-05:00

Here's something I bet you did not know: Rafael Nadal, like Phil Mickelson, is a natural righthander who plays lefty.

Legend has it that Nadal's uncle, Toni, decided early on that Rafa's two-handed backhand would benefit from a strong right arm, so he switched him.

Voila: a player who has won four French Open titles and, as of about an hour ago, his first Wimbledon.

(In case anyone is curious, Phat Phil played lefty because it allowed him to face his dad when they practiced on the driving range. As the father of an honest-to-God lefthander myself, I appreciate this very much. My son and I totally dig the fact that we can face each other on the range. Of course, my lefty comes by it honestly, so he's got that over Mickelson and Nadal. Plus, my kid is going to cure cancer and/or end the world's energy crisis. So there's that. I'm digressing.)

My point is, I sincerely hope that somebody -- anybody -- in this reading audience watched the Wimbledon men's final on Sunday, because it was not only the best tennis match I have ever seen, it was one of the best sports TV broadcasts I can remember. And in the year of Tiger vs. Rocco, that's saying something.

Look, I know that tennis is dead in this country. That's a damn shame, too, because I can clearly remember growing up with Sampras and Agassi and Becker and Courier and Chang and Seles and Sabatini (insert growling noise here) and Graf and about nine different Fernandezes; before that, there was Borg and McEnroe and Connors and Navratilova and Chrissy and Tracy Austin and I'm sure I'll remember ten more names later tonight.

Tennis used to matter. It used to be a pretty big deal, especially in my house, where my mom was an erstwhile weekend player and we gathered to watch Grand Slam finals all the time. Now, my wife is a serious player, so I watch, a little bit. My son likes to play, and he's lefthanded, and that's cool. But that's about it. Andre Agassi, one could argue, was the last successful professional tennis player who crossed over into American pop culture -- and his peak was 10 years ago.

Put it this way -- no matter how successful or how hot you may consider Maria Sharapova, Andy Roddick, Roger Federer, or any other current top pro to be, would ANY of them be invited to host 'Saturday Night Live?'

Never. And that's my point. In their day, you could make a case for McEnroe, Sampras, Agassi, Evert, and maybe Navratilova as potential hosts for 'SNL.' Tennis used to matter, and I kinda miss those days.

Which brings me to Sunday. I know that most of you didn't watch it, but dammit, I wish that you did. Because tennis is a pretty cool game -- it's easy to learn, easy to understand, rewards athleticism but also allows for craftiness, costs very little to take up, provides an excellent workout, and is generally democratic, which is more than we can say for the current salary structure of the NBA or Major League Baseball.

I've always said this about golf and tennis, two sports often unfairly connected to an elite, 'country club' lifestyle -- on the professional level, they are fair. Fair, in that you only get paid if you win. It's a purely performance-based living. Miss the cut at a PGA Tour event? Sorry, no money. Lose in the first round at Wimbledon? Sucks to be you. But show up for the NBA Draft, and you get guaranteed money. And that's pathetic.

But taking us back to Sunday, it was as good as sports television gets. Hell, it was as good as sports gets. Even if you care nothing about tennis, you would have loved the drama of Sunday's final. Those four-plus hours pretty much represent the reason why I got into this business in the first place.

You'll read post-match analysis ad infinitum, but here's what I will take away from Sunday: John McEnroe, a man hardly known for being soft, had to cut short his post-match interview with Roger Federer because he was starting to cry.

Johnny Mac, that is. Not Federer.

Does it get any better than that?

McEnroe said it best during the epic 5th set: "If this doesn't draw people into our great sport, nothing will." Indeed.

Great sport is where you find it. And great sport was found in the gloaming on Centre Court at Wimbledon on Sunday.

What To Expect

2008-07-03T07:55:00.005-05:00

Fresh off yet another home sweep of the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox, the Tampa Bay Rays have the best record in baseball and a 3.5 game lead in the American League East.

In the words of Ron Burgundy: drink it in.

Anyone who has watched the Rays this season -- and in addition to my professional responsibilities with Sun/FSN, I am also officially on the bandwagon -- cannot be surprised by what happened in St. Petersburg on Wednesday night.

Rallying from a three-run deficit by scoring six times in the 7th inning? Evan Longoria with yet another clutch extra-base hit? BJ Upton ripping out the opposition's heart by making a tough catch look easy in center field? A deep, unheralded bullpen that bends, but doesn't break? Pshaw. They've been doing it all year. At some point, the national media will be compelled to change the focus of its Rays coverage from "curious aberration" to "actual, real-life contending team."

You've noticed, too. TV ratings on both FSN Florida and on the Rays' over-the-air broadcasts have set franchise records this week. On the season, viewership is up 36 percent on FSN Florida this year over last; home attendance is up roughly 6 percent over last year's full-season average, but that number should grow as a long-suffering and oft-disappointed Tampa Bay fan base slowly accepts the truth:

This team is no fluke.

I've covered this already, but it bears repeating: yes, the Rays have talent. Loads of talent, in fact, with the most heavily-stocked minor league system in baseball chomping at the bit behind them. But the difference this season is between the ears.

The Rays expect to win. I refer you, again, to the postgame interview I did with Longoria back in May, wherein I asked him if he could believe that his team was (then) ten games over .500: "You know what? Yeah, we can."

Come back to last night, and Joe Maddon's comments after his club swept the mighty Red Sox in St. Petersburg for the second time this season, to lift themselves to a preposterous 20 games over .500: "I can't tell you that I expected it -- I'd be lying -- but right now ... we do expect to win on a nightly basis."

"Expect" is different from "believe." I may believe that I can shoot 2-under, and I may believe that I can run a half-marathon at a 6:45 pace, but that doesn't mean I can actually DO it. I can, however, expect to shoot in the high 70's once every three or four rounds, and I can expect to finish the half-marathon in something less than two hours.

Why? Because I've done it before, and I've done it often. I know my own limitations, and I know how much I've practiced, trained, or played. Expectations indicate experience. And that's what's different about the Rays this season.

Their memories are blissfully short enough to ignore all those last-place finishes from years gone by, but sharp enough to remember that they've been playing well all season. They've now swept Boston twice. They've swept the Cubs and the Angels. They're 33-13 at home. They have a winning record in every month of this season (first time in franchise history). Their expectations are based on reality, not fantasy.

But the real litmus test, of course, is in my house, where I watched Mrs. Red Sox Nation grind her teeth for each of the last three nights. As soon as the Rays blew up for 6 runs on Wednesday night and took the lead over Boston, I heard this from the living room: "Dammit, they can't beat these guys on the road!"

'They' being her Sox. 'These guys' being the Rays. By the way, she fell asleep before Wednesday night's game was over. Three minutes ago, right after I wrote the above paragraph, she walked into the office, asked me who won the game, and walked out, muttering the exact same thing: "They cannot beat them in St. Pete."

This is going to be one very entertaining summer at my place.

The next step, as several Tampa Bay-area writers pointed out this morning, will be to fend off those members of the baseball establishment who stand, arms crossed, smirking, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Will the Rays collapse? Can they continue this pace? And if they do stumble, and miss the playoffs, will this season be considered a disappointment?

Seriously? For a team that finished in last place in 9 of its first 10 seasons? Are we really asking this question now?

"Expect" vs. "believe." The Rays now have expectations. What a delightful dilemma.

The Toughest Post Ever

2008-06-26T21:35:00.004-05:00

My friend Jil noted via e-mail the other day that I have been quite lax in keeping the blog up to date.

"Is everything okay?" she wondered.

Such a loaded question.

If I write about what's been troubling me, I might get in trouble, so let's just say I apologize for not keeping up with the blog.

That said, I hope to do a better job of keeping up from now on.

I write this from New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where I am on vacation for the week. As a native of central Florida -- Winter Park, specifically -- I have a very deep, emotional attachment to this place. When I was in high school at Trinity Prep, my buddy Frank and I would drive over here on the weekends with friends and basically troll for a condo -- we had so many classmates whose parents owned second homes here, we could pretty much knock on doors until we found a place to stay overnight.

At least, I remember it that way. Knowing my mother, she may well have called everyone we knew to make sure somebody took me in. Still, I remember it as I choose to, and every time I come here as an adult, especially with my own children, I feel good. Pleasant memories.

My son, it should be mentioned, is a water rat. Whether he inherited that from me, or just comes to it naturally, is irrelevant. When I take him to the beach, he is as happy as an 8-year-old can be. He will literally ride his bodyboard until I drag his soaking ass out of the ocean. Pretty special that I can bring my own child back to a place that meant so much to me, and see him embrace it as I did. It makes me happy to see him happy, which makes me a parent.

So anyway, I haven't been updating this blog very often, for a variety of reasons. In all honesty, there has been some stuff going on at work that has demanded my attention, the results of which I'm sure I'll be answering e-mails about by this fall.

But there's this other thing, too, that has kept me off the computer for a while. I haven't written about it because it embarrasses me immensely. As I sit here, on the third floor of a wonderful home in New Smyrna Beach, I honestly have no clue as to why I feel compelled to write about this, seeing as how I haven't discussed it with anyone beyond my wife and my parents.

Two months ago, I stopped dipping.

My smokeless tobacco habit went back to Little League Baseball, slowed during high school, but was reinforced with a vengeance in college and continued unabated until two days after my 37th birthday, which was in April. On that night, I woke up with a start and decided that I didn't want to be a dipper anymore. It was as random and as unplanned as you can possibly imagine.

I dipped every day. My co-workers knew about it, my wife knew a little bit about it, my parents knew very little of it. I planned my days around dip. I always made sure I had a tin handy. From the age of 25 through the age of 37, I never played a single round of golf without a tin of Skoal in my bag -- and if you knew how much I play golf, that would shock the hell out of you.

Yet, for whatever reason, I sat bolt upright in bed one night two months ago and said, enough. The next day, I made a great ceremony of tossing out my tins, even as I gritted my teeth and hollered. Again, no clue as to why I made that decision on that night. I only know that it was immediate and it was final.

I found a website to assist me with my quit, one that was not attached to the Tobacco Free Florida campaign recently highlighted on "Under The Lights." In fact, the timing of that show was a coincidence. I would love to tell you that this experience has left me happier and feeling 'better off,' but I cannot. It's been bloody miserable. Honestly, it's the hardest thing I have ever done, and it has nothing to do with anyone, and it sucks. Sucks.

But here I am. Two months quit. My friends on my website, who, like me, are completely anonymous, are psyched about how well our group is doing. I know that I will make it, but for the moment, it sucks.

When we were shooting that "Under The Lights" episode on Tobacco Free Florida, I considered making a public announcement of my quit as part of the show's narrative. I decided against it, because I thought it might seem self-serving, and because I'm not typically one to discuss such things in public.

"So why write about it in the blog?"

Hell, I don't know. Really. I don't know. I figure, the audience for this blog is far smaller than the potential audience for "Under The Lights," and those who take the time to read this might actually care, as opposed to those who stumble across the show on Sun Sports. And, I suppose, there's the chance that someone might read this and make a decision of his or her own. Understand, however, that I don't care.

What I mean is, I will never use this forum to preach for or against anything, and therefore, you won't see any links to any sites that outline the dangers of tobacco. While I respect the efforts of any organization that tries to wean people off addictive substances, I believe it is a personal decision, and therefore there's not a damn thing anyone else can say.

So, anyway, Jil (and anyone else who cares enough to be reading down to this point), I've been lax about the blog for a while because it's been years since I could sit in front of the computer without a dip. I'm trying.

It sucks. A lot. But I'm trying.

Catching Up

2008-06-10T11:28:00.002-05:00

Work and other circumstances have conspired to keep me away from the blog for a couple of weeks. As always, it's not my fault.

However, I am several weeks behind on more than one topic. Like, for example:

Erik Spoelstra, Miami Heat head coach

I'm sure that many fans in our fair state were a little taken aback by this announcement on April 28th, but I wasn't. For one thing, Pat Riley favors loyalty and 'buy-in' above all else, and Spoelstra has been nothing if not a loyal soldier in the Riley system. More than that, however, Spoelstra had the enthusiastic support of Dwyane Wade, which is much of the battle in today's NBA -- if your star player is on board, you can pretty much fudge the rest.

I covered the Miami Heat during their playoff run in 2004, when Wade was a rookie and Spoelstra was the third assistant on the bench. I noticed Erik Spoelstra then, perhaps because he was so close to my own age, but also because it was obvious that players reacted to him.

Often times, when a third or fourth assistant goes out to the floor early to help a player work out, it's a desultory, bloodless affair: shoot, rebound, pass. Shoot, rebound, pass. With Spoelstra, however, it was different. The young coach -- not much older than most of the players themselves -- looked them in the eye, joked with them, but didn't patronize them or appear overly solicitous or deferential. He engaged them, and they responded. There's an incredibly high value placed on that skill in the NBA, and that's why I'm not surprised about Spoelstra's hire.

In his first season, at his age, there will be moments when he gets outcoached. He'll get overwhelmed at times, even for a short stint. It's going to happen. Happened to Byron Scott, happened to Mike Brown, happened to Doc Rivers back in the day -- like Spoelstra, they all started their NBA head coaching careers while in their late 30's.

And all three have subsequently taken a team to the NBA Finals. As long as the Heat supply Spoelstra with some players, he'll be fine.

Kobe Bryant

For the last few weeks, I've been telling anyone who listens that Kobe Bryant must be the best basketball player on the planet.

Not exactly groundbreaking, I know. But here's my evidence: the Lakers' roster.

Here's what I see: Pau Gasol is a really good player. Lamar Odom, who you all know I love, is a pretty good player. Ronny Turiaf is an intriguing project. Derek Fisher is an inspirational, level-headed veteran.

That's about it.

The rest of these guys are castoffs, injured, unproven, or average. Yet the Lakers beat the defending champion Spurs in five games in the Conference Finals to get to the championship round.

Conclusion? Kobe Bryant must be the best basketball player on the planet. Because beyond that, I have no idea how LA got this far.

The US Open

Even if you understand nothing about professional golf, and care even less, you have to believe me on this one: the USGA's opening-round grouping of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Adam Scott at the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines is a joke.

First of all, Tiger and Phil hate each other. If that's not common knowledge by now, I don't know what qualifies as "common knowledge." I thought that superstars were supposed to get star treatment -- meaning, pairings that make them happy. There's no way either of them are happy about Thursday and Friday.

But more to the point, the USGA has created a logistical nightmare. The largest gallery of the year to date will be following this one group for all of two days. Did anyone consider traffic flow on the golf course? You put Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson out there with any old average Tour player, the gallery is massive. You put Tiger and Phil together -- nobody on the course will be following anyone else. How are they going to get around? And what did Adam Scott do to deserve this? Stupid.

Orlando Sentinel columnist Jerry Greene asked precisely the correct question on a conference call with NBC Sports -- "was this a gift to the fans or just cheap pandering to TV?"

The producer and the talent demurred, but ol' Johnny Miller laid it out there: "I talked to Phil and I can say he sounded like he was not to thrilled about it."

Of course he's not thrilled about it. Who wants to grind through the first two rounds of a US Open with every yokel in a five-state area breathing down your neck? Mickelson would trade Woods for a Tim Herron and a Bart Bryant To Be Named Later in a heartbeat.

And trust me -- there's no possible way that TV didn't have something to do with this. While NBC has only a two-hour window at the '08 Open on Thursday and Friday, mighty ESPN brings you a whopping seven hours of coverage each day.

Woods hasn't played since the Masters in April, meaning he's been absent from ESPN's highlight reels for a full two months. Fourteen hours of major championship coverage of Tiger's return from knee surgery is good TV -- fourteen hours of major championship coverage of Tiger's return from knee surgery while playing next to the 2nd-ranked player in the world, whom Tiger happens to despise?

Pure gold. Which is why I'm positive ESPN had something to do with it. I certainly can't blame them. You watch: the ratings for the first two rounds of this year's US Open will probably be the highest in history.

That is all.

Rays Of Hope

2008-05-27T22:04:00.007-05:00

I have to be honest -- I haven't been much of a baseball guy for quite some time now.

It kills me to write that, because baseball was my game, from Little League to high school to my freshman year of college. In my first semester at Cornell, I walked on to the Big Red squad, made it through three rounds of cuts, plunked a homer off a parking garage in practice, and then hung up my spikes in favor of a broadcasting career. Yes, I was a ballplayer, once.

Then, in 1994, Major League Baseball cancelled the World Series. Something about the '94 strike rubbed me precisely the wrong way at precisely the right time. In my idealistic 20-something view, any league stupid enough to blow its own championship wasn't worth my time (this was also way before the NHL blew an entire season). I washed my hands of the game, at the professional level, and eventually lost interest in baseball as a whole.

Time passes. I have two kids now, one of whom has already taken his shot at Little League. His mother, I may have mentioned, is a manic Red Sox fan. Baseball comes up in conversation at our house more often than ever, although the NBA, golf, even tennis is a more frequent topic.

A curious transformation is taking place, however. I find myself scanning the sports pages for information I previously ignored. I'm searching the channel guide on my DirecTV for broadcasts that, well, I'm surprised I'm searching for. Funniest dang thing has happened this summer:

The Tampa Bay Rays have made me like baseball again.

Yes, the Rays, the team that has finished DFL in its division in nine of the last ten years. The team once known as the Devil Rays, perhaps the single worst nickname ever chosen for a major professional sports franchise, with awful uniforms that matched. The Rays, who play in the dimly lit, awkwardly located, yet oddly attractive Tropicana Field (the former Thunderdome, Florida Suncoast Dome, or whatever else they've called it). The Rays, the franchise that has spent more than a decade waffling between embarrassing and irrelevant. Those Rays.

Except, they're not Those Rays. Not embarrassing, not irrelevant, and not even the Devil Rays. Not anymore. They're the Tampa Bay Rays, thank you. And they're for real.

I've been to St. Pete several times this season, in various roles -- filling in for Todd Kalas as the Rays host on FSN Florida, shooting interviews for a couple of shows we have in production, even checking out a game or two as nothing more than a fan. And these Rays, these young, impetuous, confident Rays, are making it fun again.

You can check the stats yourself. They can pitch, for one thing. They play defense. They're fast. They're aggressive. But more to the point -- they believe.

After Evan Longoria drilled a walkoff double to complete a three-game sweep of the Orioles last weekend, I asked him in a postgame interview, "can you believe you're 10 games over .500 at this point in the season?"

I loved his answer: "You know what? Yeah, we can."

The Rays are winning, and the cool part is, they're doing it with a collection of young, intensely competitive, preternaturally mature ballplayers.

One guy makes a great catch, the other guys try to match him. One guy turns in a clutch pitching performance, the rest of the staff bust it to hold up their end. Success breeds confidence; that confidence leads to friendly competition among teammates; the cycle strengthens. And there's manager Joe Maddon, he of the refined tastes and California-cool demeanor, pushing buttons with phrases like "the information is all out there." He presents his players with opportunities to win, and they accept. Simple, but it's taken this franchise over 10 years to get to this point.

This is no fluke. I've been there, I've seen it. They may not win their division, but this is not smoke and mirrors. It's too bad that the attendance is still so abysmal -- although if I were a Tampa Bay baseball fan, I'd be just as suspicious, fatigued, cynical, what have you. It's been a long decade over there. If the Rays are still contending at the All-Star Break, fans in that region have no excuses whatsoever, traffic or no traffic, history or no history. This has the potential to be the best baseball story of the last ten years.

Just the other day, I stood along the first base line at the Trop, waiting for Maddon to speak to the media. The Rays were taking batting practice. In the outfield, Carl Crawford and BJ Upton shagged fly balls. In the infield, Aki Iwamura worked on his pivot with Jason Bartlett. Coaches like Dave Martinez and George Hendrick kept everyone loose, getting in their digs. The atmosphere was charged, professional, relaxed. The atmosphere of a winning team.

I guess I was rocking back and forth, or maybe just staring, but one of our producers looked over and said, "you look like you're jonesin' for baseball."

Well, whattaya know. Perhaps I am, for the first time in years.

The Rays have made it fun again.