Is it the Knight Time?

I’m not sure which line is correct, can you always come home? Or can you never come home again?

Bob Knight, college basketball guru and Indiana legend faces a similar predicament with Saturday’s announcement of his induction into the Indiana University Hall of Fame.

It’s hard to argue with Knight’s success, the man took over a once proud program turned laughing stock in the early 1970s and won three national titles (1976, 1981, and 1987). Indiana became a popular fixture on national television after Knight’s arrival, and that was no coincidence.

He is still renowned in the basketball world as the preeminent teacher of the motion offense. It doesn’t hurt that Knight led the United States to its last gold medal with amateurs (even if one was named Jordan) in 1984. Knight always got the best from his players on the court, and perhaps more so, prepared them for what awaited them off of it.

For all of the positive things Knight brought to Indiana, there were unquestionably some negatives. Knight’s temper, his lack of respect for journalists just trying to do their jobs, and his old school approach haven’t always meshed well with basketball fans.

Indiana University Athletic Director Fred Glass deserves some credit here. He reached out to the Indiana legend, not through an email or a phone call, but through a handwritten note asking him to attend the ceremony. The ceremony is to be held during halftime of the Indiana football game against Wisconsin in November. Knight is scheduled to be inducted along with former player Steve Downing, a former Big Ten Player of the Year in 1973, who played under and developed a close friendship with the General.

Glass made one huge mistake though: he didn’t test the waters before releasing the information to the public, and more importantly the national media. Knight’s dismissal from Indiana in 2000 is still a sensitive topic for the coach. As an analyst at ESPN, he has yet to say the word “Indiana,” even in passing.

Now, if Knight snubs Indiana, he looks like the bitter former coach some think he is, and he probably is just that. A man who has given so much not only to the Indiana University basketball program, but the university as a whole deserves a chance to come back on his own time, at a time when both sides are comfortable. Fred Glass did the right thing in opening a dialogue, but let’s hope his miscalculation doesn’t close it for good.

Indiana and Bob Knight are synonymous, and they always will be. Time may heal all wounds, but it may not quite be that time yet.

Sometimes the Fat Lady Just Won't Sing

So it finally happened today. After months of anticipation, and three weeks after both sides announced the window had closed, Brett Favre signed with the Minnesota Vikings.

Sports columnists around the country will paint Favre either as a hero (white horse, Super Bowl run, the whole bit) or a villain (usurper of Sage Rosenthels and Tavarius Jackson, team chemistry killer, etc.). The common sense truth is that Brett Favre is neither of those things.

Brett Favre is just a guy trying to do what loves to do, while he still can (sorta) do it. Even in advanced football years at age thirty-nine, he found someone willing to pay him for it.

I’m certainly not going to sit here and proclaim the Minnesota Vikings as the favorite in the NFC. Hell, I’d still pick them second in their own division behind the Chicago Bears. What I will do is say that people should just get over it. The man doesn’t know how to do anything else. He’s a quarterback, and he just so happens to be able to make an amazing living doing it.

No, the Vikings won’t make the Super Bowl, but they’ll be in the national media spotlight, sell tons of merchandise, and endear themselves to a football starving public that craves superstars like Farve.

By this time in two months, the Vikings will have had enough media exposure, sell enough tickets, and push enough purple “4" jerseys off the racks to cover the investment made in Farve today. Vikings owner Zygi Wilf knows that Brett Favre is good business, and the good football may just be a bonus, like tasty mints on the pillow in a plush hotel.

On the actual football side of things, Brett Favre makes them a better team, period. Have you watched the Vikings the last two seasons? And outside of highlights on Sportscenter, has anyone actually seen the Vikings complete more than one pass in a row? Didn’t think so.

There are many things you could say about Brett Favre. He may have an axe to grind with the Packers, and he may have trouble not knowing when to let go, but he’s no dummy. No one with any sense leaves money on the table, and especially not twenty-five million dollars.

A Chink in the Armor?

If there was ever a sure thing in sports, it’s Tiger Woods on Sunday. That was until this past weekend’s PGA Championship. We could run through all the numbers: fairways hit, driving distance, or putts per round (Tiger would rather us not), but in this case one simple number stands out: zero. That’s the number of times golf’s most dominant player had relinquished his place atop the leaderboard after the fifty-four holes in a major championship.

South Korean Y.E. Yang, a thirty-eight year old who didn’t even take up the game of golf until age nineteen, played the role of spoiler Sunday at Hazeltine. It would be easy to say that Tiger lost more than Yang won. That simply wasn’t the case.

Anyone watching the same tournament as the rest of us this past weekend saw two men: one that wanted it more than anything else, but simply couldn’t make a putt to save his life (Woods), and one man who seemed content to linger among the pack, hitting amazing approach and chip shots at clutch moments (Yang). Such roles may have been reversed in past years, but Woods’ past record of greatness hung on his shoulders, while Yang simply hung loose.

Tiger’s defeat at Hazeltine isn’t the end of the world. It’s probably not even the end of an era. What it is, however, is the end of the gripping mental lock that Tiger Woods has held on all comers at the majors for over a decade. That said, Tiger is still Tiger, and this doesn't diminish the great year he's had thus far. Woods may not have won a major during 2009, but he’s won five tournaments to date.

Perhaps most importantly, Tiger’s bridesmaid performance on Sunday doesn’t take away from his fourteen majors. Once upon a time, there was someone who finished in the second spot an amazing nineteen times. Who was that? None other than Jack Nicklaus.

Three Days in the Park

Lollapalooza is too vast to encompass in any column, so let’s hit on two highlights and low-lights from the weekend that was from Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois....



Vampire Weekend

The former Columbia students have come a long way in just over three years. The indie rock band has been the darling of Rolling Stone (who rated the band’s 2008 self-titled debut as the tenth best album of last year), and rode their word-of-mouth popularity to the one of the main stages over the weekend..The boys from the Big Apple will probably become the darlings of Chicago after Sunday’s performance, which included rousing versions of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" and “Oxford Comma.”

The group may only have a small catalog consisting of one release to date, but the crowd at Vampire Weekend had as much energy as any performance all weekend.

The Raveonettes

The simplistic duo from Denmark were easily the most welcome surprise of the weekend. With catchy guitar rifts, steady beats, and vocals seemingly dropped out of the 1950s, the Raveonettes were able to make the Chicago crowd forget about the heat during their set. Songs like “Love in a Trash Can” and “Heartbreak Stroll” showed off not only the band’s talent, but also their ability to get a feel for the crowd and play to it as opposed to rolling through song after song.


The Decemberists

The energy surrounding the band’s Saturday performance was palpable, at least until the show actually started. It goes without saying that a band is allowed to shy away from playing their hits, but not entirely. One of the country’s largest and well-organized music festivals isn’t the time to tinker and get away from the enticing vocals and intent bass lines (i.e. “O Valencia!”) that have characterized the band in recent years. No one is disputing that “The Rake’s Song” and “The Hazards of Love” were neat to see in a live setting, but they didn’t exactly rock the house.


Jane’s Addiction

It’s hard to show fault with a re-united lineup complete with Lolla founder Perry Ferrell and pop cliche Dave Navarro, but they simply looked old during Sunday’s festival closing performance. The two-hour set would’ve been somewhat forgettable if not for a lively version of “Jane Says,” which featured a collaboration with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.

Endless Summer

The boys of summer are about to give way to the gladiators of the gridiron, and I for one, am a bit disappointed. The Hall of Fame game kicks off the NFL preseason on Sunday. Preseason football should be as exciting as lawnmower racing (it appears on ESPN2 from time to time, seriously), but instead is treated as if it were the most-exciting thing since new Coke.

That’s not to say that I don’t love football, quite the opposite actually. There’s just something to be said for that time every year after the NBA Finals and before the start of preseason football where America’s pastime reigns supreme as the sporting nation’s sole obsession.

For all the things that football is: hip, fast-paced, and made for television, baseball is the opposite. Baseball is old-school, rarely played at a blistering pace, and doesn’t easily translate to our dominant broadcast medium.

That said, there’s always been something about baseball that draws true sports fans in, something more raw, intrinsic, and emotional than anything football has to offer: the history of the game.

Sure, football may have history as well, but your everyday football fan would have a hard time comparing (statistically or otherwise) modern-day football studs like Peyton Manning and Ladanian Tolimson to heroes of true yesteryear like Slingin’ Sammy Baugh or Red Grange.

Baseball, on the other hand is easy to compare in a generational context. Cardinal fans of today may not be able to pick Rogers Hornsby out of a lineup, but they surely could give you a bullet point listing of his achievements: .358 batting average (second all-time behind Ty Cobb), two-time Triple Crown winner (1922 and 1926), two-time MVP (1925 and 1929), and an unprecedented World Series title as a player-manager in 1926.

A major part of baseball’s history is its statistical record. Although some categories have been added over the years (saves, quality starts, etc.), baseball’s standard system of statistical measurement means that the sport’s records are followed more closely than those of its gridiron counterpart.

Does anyone really remember pacing around with pulse-pounding nerves while Peyton Manning broke Dan Marino’s two-decade old passing touchdown record in 2004? How about Ladanian’s pursuit of Walter Payton and the rushing touchdown mark in 2007?

If Pujols makes a legitimate run at baseball’s Triple Crown, on the other hand, the attention that the chase will garner in late September will be exponentially more than a comparable football record-breaking pursuit.

People remember baseball’s records, however, because they are nearly sacred. Ted Williams, even to casual fans, is known as “Greatest Hitter who Ever Lived” in large part because he is the last man to hit .400 for an entire season in 1941.

Hank Aaron’s home-run record transcended sports for the thirty years it stood (and in the minds of many purists still stands), so when Barry Bonds began to make assault on Aaron’s mark beginning in the 2000 season, federal investigators seriously looked into possibility of performance enhancing drugs playing a role in such a historic pursuit.

It’d be nearly impossible to deny that professional football in America is the dominant force in sports culture today. Peyton Manning is ten times more visible than say Albert Pujols, and that’s not by accident, football has all the flash, but baseball triumphs in terms of its substance. In an age when substance struggles against the flash that has become our society, baseball is a welcome sight. If only the boys of summer could own the sports stage through the “Fall Classic”, wouldn’t that be something?